The development of theta and alpha neural oscillations from ages 3 to 24 years

By Dillan Cellier, Justin Riddle, I. Petersen, Kai Hwang. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 2021

192 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Developmental Neuroscience

View Paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2021.100969

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Citations in the corpus

OOD Detection for EEG-based Machine Learning in High-Risk Environments (2026, unknown): “Even for comparatively well-studied variables like sex or age with known population-level differences [30–32], a lot of the variance is driven by individual differences.”
Human alpha frequency and expression across the lifespan: a 2,172-participant electrophysiology-MRI atlas (2026, unknown): “It changes during development and aging [10,47,48,51,52,55,56], and it has been investigated in relation to temporal perception and cognitive processing [11,12].”
Reliable but Wrong? Automated Detection of Heart Rate Artifacts as a Source of Bias in Pediatric EEG Data (2026, unknown): “Individual alpha peak frequency increases and plateaus in late childhood, with young children showing oscillatory (periodic) peaks in the theta range (4–7 Hz) that typically shift to the alpha range (8–12 Hz) with a pivot point in dominant frequency from theta to alpha around age 7 years [29].”
Brain Activity of Young Children in Bangladesh Is Associated With Biopsychosocial Conditions at the Individual‐, Family‐, and Household‐Level (2026, unknown): “Research has shown that, as typically developing children age, EEG activity increases in the alpha and beta power bands and decreases in the delta and theta power bands (Cellier et al. 2021; Hill et al. 2022; Matousek and Petersen 1973).”
Characterization of aperiodic and theta activity in preterm infants using EEG: Insights into cerebral maturation and inter-individual variability (2026, unknown): “The aperiodic component was fitted and subtracted using the “ fixed mode ” , as infant spectra typically lack the clear low-frequency inflection point ( “ knee ” ) observed in adults (Cellier et al., 2021; Donoghue, Haller, et al., 2020; Wilkinson et al., 2024).”
Neurodevelopment Trajectory of Electrophysiological Functional Connectivity Following Alcohol Use Initiation (2026, unknown): “Resting-state alpha rhythms are known to continue maturing throughout adolescence (43,44) and support large-scale posterior–anterior integration, with parieto–occipital regions functioning as major hubs projecting toward frontal areas.”
Age-related neural dynamics of empathy in preschoolers: an EEG study with naturalistic viewing (2026, unknown): “During early childhood, theta oscillations appear as the dominant frequency, while alpha oscillations gradually emerge and increase in both power and peak frequency with age (Cellier et al. 2021).”
Aperiodic Dynamics of Cell Assemblies Recruited for L1 and L2 Processing of French Wh-Dependencies Highlight a Temporo-Parietal Engagement in Syntax (2026, unknown): “Aperiodic activity shifts in early childhood [61–64] and in older adulthood [58,65,66], reflecting changes in brain circuits.”
Pediatric resting EEG collection, preprocessing, and analysis: A systematic review (2026, unknown): “Additionally, as children age, the predominant frequency transitions from the theta band to the alpha band (Cellier et al., 2021; Perone et al., 2018) and children ’ s bodies and heads develop (e.g., the fontanelle closes; Troller-Renfree et al., 2024), which likely necessitate changes to the…”
Temporal Interference Stimulation Enhances Neural Regeneration (2026, unknown): “Theta band oscillation is a hallmark of early brain activity, emerging spontaneously as ‘spindle bursts’ [ 103–106 ] and shaping development through sensory-driven processes [ 104, 106, 50, 107, 108 ].”
Non-Neural Sources Systematically Impact Aperiodic EEG Activity (2026, unknown): “Furthermore, this range was commonly used in subsequent studies examining the relationship between aperiodic activity and age 12 – 14,50, Across all analytic subsamples, the specparam algorithm achieved consistently high model fits across (R² = 0.96-0.99), regardless of differences in EEG data…”
Relating ADHD to the aperiodic component of the EEG signal in both males and females across development (2026, unknown): “…studies have shown that the aperiodic exponent and offset decrease linearly with age across childhood (Hill et al., 2022) and into young adulthood (Cellier et al., 2021), such that as age increases the aperiodic component of the EEG becomes flatter and the offset lower, reflecting a developmental…”
Revolutionizing Pediatric Neurophysiology With Magnetoencephalography (2026, unknown): “…significant regional differences in the aperiodic measures, whereas several other studies did not observe significant regional differences (Cellier et al. 2021; Favaro et al. 2023; Hill, Clark, et al. 2022; McSweeney et al. 2023) or did not statistically assess regional differences…”
The Interaction between Sleep and Development on Wake EEG Oscillations (2026, unknown): “Our results on offsets and exponents replicate previous ﬁ ndings: They decrease linearly with age (Cellier et al., 2021; Hill et al., 2022; Tröndle et al., 2022) and originate from broad, primarily midline sources (Favaro et al., 2023).”
Structural and Functional Imaging of Motor Outcomes in Twins With Perinatal Stroke: A Case Report (2026, unknown): “This restricts our ability to examine dynamic performance monitoring, an important part of frontal theta function [7, 43].”