Age-related trends in aperiodic EEG activity and alpha oscillations during early- to middle-childhood

By M. McSweeney, S. Morales, Emilio A. Valadez, G. Buzzell, Lydia Yoder, W. Fifer, N. Pini, Lauren C. Shuffrey, A. Elliott, J. Isler and 1 more. 2023

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Developmental Neuroscience

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In Developmental Neuroscience

C. Wilkinson

Citations in the corpus

The development of aperiodic neural activity in the human brain (2024, unknown): “Our findings demonstrate: (1) a gradient of slopes from inferior lateral to superior medial regions, suggesting reduced neural noise in inferior lateral temporal regions and increased neural noise in superior medial frontal regions (Fig.”
Human alpha frequency and expression across the lifespan: a 2,172-participant electrophysiology-MRI atlas (2026, unknown): “Large developmental and lifespan studies now show that the apparent direction of alpha-power change depends on whether total, relative, normalized, or aperiodic-adjusted power is measured [45,47,50,51,53].”
Relating ADHD to the aperiodic component of the EEG signal in both males and females across development (2026, unknown): “A few studies have reported a quadratic relationship between aperiodic exponent and age – typically characterized by an initial increase in the exponent among infants and younger children followed by a subsequent decline (e.g., Wilkinson et al., 2024; McSweeney et al., 2023; Sacks et al., 2025).”
Resting-state periodic and aperiodic brain oscillations from birth to preschool years: Aperiodic maturity predicts developmental course (2026, unknown): “For example, several EEG studies examining school-age children found a significantly larger dominant response in an eyes-closed than an eyes-open task (McSweeney, 2023; Hill, 2022; Isler, 2023).”
Aperiodic parameters of the fMRI power spectrum associate with preterm birth and neonatal age (2026, unknown): “Given that in previous EEG studies ﬂ attening of the power spectrum has been linked to postnatal aging 28 – 31, 43 , It is important to note that our study focused on changes in the low-frequency power spectrum of the BOLD signal (0.01 – 0.15 Hz), and caution is warranted when comparing our results…”
The impact of a monthly unconditional cash transfer on child brain activity: A 4-year follow-up (2026, unknown): “Also, newer computational methods allow for oscillatory alpha to be easily separated from background brain activity (Donoghue et al., 2020; McSweeney et al., 2023).”
Distinct developmental changes in linear and nonlinear neural interactions across infancy and adulthood (2025, unknown): “Longitudinal studies extending from childhood to adulthood have observed decreases in aperiodic slope with age (Hill et al., 2022; McSweeney et al., 2023; Merkin et al., 2023; Voytek et al., 2015).”
Lifespan Trajectories of Alpha Rhythm: Dynamic Shifts in Neural Excitation-Inhibition Balance (2025, unknown): “Alpha rhythm naturally follows specific patterns with age 52–54 , but sex is also an important variable that needs to be considered 55–59 .”
Longitudinal trajectories of aperiodic EEG activity in early to middle childhood (2024, background): “Furthermore, McSweeney et al. (2023) fit mixed models both with and without an added quadratic term to investigate slope trajectories (cross-sectionally) across 4-to 11-year-olds.”
Exploring Background Aperiodic Electroencephalography (EEG) Activity in the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (2024, unknown): “Despite cross-sectional work during childhood (Hill et al., 2022; McSweeney et al., 2023), longitudinal evidence on sex-related changes in aperiodic activity during the transition from childhood to adolescence, marking a critical stage of development, is needed.”
The development of aperiodic and periodic resting-state power between early childhood and adulthood: New insights from optically pumped magnetometers (2024, background): “Shifts in the aperiodic offset can be interpreted as changes in broadband power (Donoghue, Haller, et al., 2020).”
Developmental trajectories of EEG aperiodic and periodic components in children 2–44 months of age (2024, unknown): “Longitudinal studies extending from childhood to adulthood have observed decreases in aperiodic slope with age, suggestive of increases in E/I balance with age 13 – 16 .”