The power of rhythms: how steady-state evoked responses reveal early neurocognitive development.

• Rhythmic stimulation provides a powerful tool to objectively assess the emergence and development of cognitive functions efficiently. • Steady-state evoked potentials (SS-EPs) are particularly robust to artifacts, and thus benefit from a high signal-to-noise ratio. • SS-EPs can be used to target a broad array of cognitive and neural processes. • We provide practical guidelines and recommendations for the implementation of SS-EP studies Electroencephalography (EEG) is a non-invasive and painless recording of cerebral activity, particularly well-suited for studying young infants, allowing the inspection of cerebral responses in a constellation of different ways. Of particular interest for developmental cognitive neuroscientists is the use of rhythmic stimulation, and the analysis of steady-state evoked potentials (SS-EPs) – an approach also known as frequency tagging. In this paper we rely on the existing SS-EP early developmental literature to illustrate the important advantages of SS-EPs for studying the developing brain. We argue that (1) the technique is both objective and predictive: the response is expected at the stimulation frequency (and/or higher harmonics), (2) its high spectral specificity makes the computed responses particularly robust to artifacts, and (3) the technique allows for short and efficient recordings, compatible with infants' limited attentional spans. We additionally provide an overview of some recent inspiring use of the SS-EP technique in adult research, in order to argue that (4) the SS-EP approach can be implemented creatively to target a wide range of cognitive and neural processes. For all these reasons, we expect SS-EPs to play an increasing role in the understanding of early cognitive processes. Finally, we provide practical guidelines for implementing and analyzing SS-EP studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]