Anesthesia would not induce a state like traditionally operationalized resting-state, but it depends on how you define "resting state." IMO it is one of the worst-defined experimental constructs in psychophysiological research. It's a grab-bag for not defining a specific experimental task except not moving around. Typically there are many confounds between what subjects are asked to do in an experimental task and what they do in a resting-state period, and there could be a much sharper experimental contrast.

A big problem is that there are lots of differences in EEG due to various intrinsically generated mental activity that can occur during a quiet resting period (e.g., Barry et al, Clinical Neurophysiology 118(12): 2765-2773; Onton & Makeig, Front Hum Neurosci, 3, 1662-5161). In 4-year-olds you would not only get all of the variance due to the range of intrinsically generated mental activity in the absence of a specific imposed task; you would also get a larger and more variable range of motor and speech expression.

Finally, though I know little about anesthesia, I'd assume that any type will induce multiple CNS and ANS changes that affect EEG. Plus ethically you'd need a really good clinical reason for anesthetizing children other than collecting resting-state EEG which, as I suggested, is minimally informative.

I'm agree with Gedeon about anesthesia. We are registering resting EEG asking children to play with us, for example like we are austronauts and we are in a dark cosmos that's why we need to close eyes and not to move before we reach our station. It takes a lot of time to make a child feel free, not everyone wants to play,etc. Better to meet 2 times and more. It is painstaking way, but if you manage to do it you feel happy, belive me. Play with a child and ask mother to help you.

Yes, I agree with both of you (Elizaveta & Gedeon) that anesthesia is not an option and measures something else. I just distributed a short questionnaire to mothers of 4-year-olds asking them how they would let their child sit still with eyes closed. Maybe it'll give me some new insights ^^ A game or a story (playing astronauts) might be a good idea! Thanks for your answer Elizaveta!

I wish you patience and sucsess in this hard job)))))

with adults, "resting state" is completely meaningless. for me at least, it's hard to tell whether anything discrete is going on in a baby's head - maybe they really do have a "not doing anything" state. (I'm not a parent and have escaped with almost no exposure to the dirty, noisy little beasts ;)

providing a simple, easy-to-replicate task (some kind of auditory stimulus, perhaps novelty/oddball?) would make a lot of sense to me.

Just an update: I have two conditions now. In the first condition the children have to watch a movie for 3 minutes (without sound), sitting still and no talking and in the second condition we play a 'eyes-closed'-game in which the child has to close their eyes as long a possible. So far I could collect nice data for the movie. Not all children want to participate in the second condition. We have a cohort of 190 children though, so I think I will manage to get enough data to compare both conditions :) I'm curious about the differences in network connectivity for both conditions (which probably will be there).

Any ideas how to examine what 'the best' condition is (other than practical applicability)?

Marion, it depends on what in connectivity you are interested about. I mean there will be great difference in connectivity in eyes closed and eyes open. If you want to describe the zones working during special task with eyes open- you dont need data with eyes close. If you want to desribe persistent networks you need more than 2 conditions.

I'm not sure about the difference of these two conditions (EO vs EC) - what does it mean physiologicaly? what process will be reflected in this difference? May be I do not understand correctly the idea of your research?

Some papers about connectivity. May be it will be useful:

R.E. Greenblatt, M.E. Pfliegera,, A.E. Ossadtchi. Connectivity measures applied to human brain electrophysiological data Journal of Neuroscience Methods 207 (2012) 1–16

Stefan Haufea, Vadim V. Nikulinc, Klaus-Robert Müllera, Guido Nolte

A critical assessment of connectivity measures for EEG data: A simulation study

NeuroImage Volume 64, 1 January 2013, Pages 120–133

I remembered our work on children aged 5-6, 9-10 and adults. It is about connectivity in EC condition, rest vs stereognostic test.

Best regards, Elizaveta

Article Ontogenetic formation of stereognosis brain mechanism (EEG study

Hi all!

We have made some progress ourselves and developed a new task! The task uses a new hype: hatching Pokemon eggs. The child has to hatch a virtual Pokemon egg by placing their chin on an incubator (self-made chin stand) and close their eyes. After 25 sec. they hear a cracking sound and they can open their eyes. This is repeated 8 times. They get a Pokemon Passport with 8 Pokemon that they need to hatch.

The task seems to work really well! Kids love it and we see nice alpha waves. Because we use the chin stand, our data looks super clean :)

See this video for more information:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JGlmUGoEyc