I completed my doctoral dissertation in 2003 at the Cognitive Brain Research Unit, University of Helsinki under the supervision of Academy Professor Risto Naatanen and Dr Rita Ceponiene, in close collaboration with Professor of Neonatology Vineta Fellman MD PhD, from the Hospital for Children and Adolescents, Helsinki (HUCH). The longitudinal study presented in the dissertation describes the normal variation and maturation of the auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) of infants from birth to two years of age.

In 2005, I won an Academy of Finland fellowship for independent research at the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck College, where I have been investigating audiovisual speech integration in infants in collaboration with Professors Gergely Csibra and Mark Johnson.

In 2007, I joined the Institute for Research in Child Development (IRCD) to develop electrophysiological research exploring fundamental cognitive processes in infancy and childhood, using the EEG sensor net. We are working in close collaboration with CBCD, Birbeck.

Currently, I am responsible for EEG/ERP research in BabyLab.Together with Professor Derek Moore, Dr Przemyslaw Tomalski and Professor Mark Johnson, we are developing a new infant neuro-cognitive battery (INCBY) using EEG, eye-tracking techniques and behavioural measures of language, attention, executive functioning and social development in order to identify potential risk factors as early as possible in development. As is known from previous scientific research, the earlier the rehabilitation starts the more beneficial results it brings.

• Cognitive and perceptual development in infancy and childhood
• Maturation of brain event-related potentials (ERPs) from birth and throughout childhood
• Audio-visual speech perception and language acquisition
• Early socio-cognitive development and infant-parent attachment
• Early learning and pre-school education, learning disorders

Peer-reviewed Journal Articles

1. Leipälä, J., Partanen, E., Kushnerenko, E., Huotilainen, M., & Fellman, V. (in press). Perinatal cerebral insults alter auditory event-related potentials. Early Human Development.
2. Guiraud, J.A., Tomalski, P., Kushnerenko, E., Ribeiro, H., Davies, K., Charman, T., … Johnson M.H. (2012). Atypical audiovisual speech integration in infants at risk for autism. PLoS ONE, 7(5), e36428. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0036428
3. Guiraud, J.A., Kushnerenko, E., Tomalski, P., Davies, K., Ribeiro, H., & Johnson, M.H. (2011). Differential habituation to repeated sounds in infants at high risk for autism. NeuroReport, 22(16), 845–849. doi:10.1097/WNR.0b013e32834c0bec
4. Jansson-Verkasalo, E., Ruusuvirta, T., Huotilainen, M., Alku, P., Kushnerenko, E., Suominen, K., et al. (2010). Atypical perceptual narrowing in prematurely born infants is associated with compromised language acquisition at 2 years of age. BMC Neuroscience, 11, 88. doi:10.1186/1471-2202-11-88
5. Kushnerenko, E., Teinonen, T., Volein, A., & Csibra, G. (2008). Electrophysiological evidence of illusory audiovisual speech percept in human infants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA, 105(32), 11442–11445. doi:10.1073/pnas.0804275105

Book Chapters

1. Kushnerenko, E. (2010). Cognitive development of a child during first year of life: behavioural and electrophysiological methods. In I. Pavlov (Ed.), From neuron to cognition. St Petersburg: SpbU.
2. Kushnerenko, E., & Johnson, M.H. (2010). The newborn behavior. In H. Lagercrantz, M. Hanson, D.M. Peebles, L.R. Ment & P. Evrard (Eds.), The newborn brain: neuroscience and clinical applications (2nd ed.).
3. Csibra, G., Kushnerenko, E., & Grossmann, T. (2009). Electrophysiological methods in studying infant cognitive development. In C. Nelson & M. Luciana (Eds.), Handbook of developmental cognitive neuroscience (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Peer-reviewed Journal Articles

1. Kushnerenko, E., Winkler, I., Horváth, J., Näätänen, R., Pavlov, I., Fellman, V., et al. (2007). Processing acoustic change and novelty in newborn infants. European Journal of Neuroscience, 26(1), 265–274. doi:10.1111/j.1460-9568.2007.05628.x
2. Mikkola, K., Kushnerenko, E., Partanen, E., Serenius-Sirved, S., Leipäläa, J., Huotilainen, M., et al. (2007). Auditory event-related potentials and neurocognition of preterm children at five years of age. Clinical Neurophysiology, 118(7), 1494–502. doi:10.1016/j.clinph.2007.04.012
3. Sambeth, A., Huotilainen, M., Kushnerenko, E., Fellman, V., & Pihko, E. (2006). Newborns discriminate novel from harmonic sounds: a study using magnetoencephalography. Clinical Neurophysiology, 117(3), 496–503. doi:10.1016/j.clinph.2005.11.008
4. Fellman, V., Kushnerenko, E., Mikkola, K., Ceponiene, R., Leipala, J., & Naatanen, R. (2004). Atypical auditory event-related potentials in preterm infants during the first year of life: a possible sign of cognitive dysfunction? Pediatric Research, 56(2), 291–297. doi:10.1203/01.PDR.0000132750.97066.B9
5. Huotilainen, M., Kujala, A., Hotakainen, M., Shestakova, A., Kushnerenko, E., Parkkonen, L., et al. (2003). Auditory magnetic responses of healthy newborns. NeuroReport, 14(14), 1871–1875. doi:10.1097/00001756-200310060-00023
6. Winkler, I., Kushnerenko, E., Horváth, J., Ceponiene, R., Fellman, V., Huotilainen, M., et al. (2003). Newborn infants can organize the auditory world. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 100(20), 11812–11815. doi:10.1073/pnas.2031891100
7. Balan, P., Kushnerenko, E., Huotilainen, M., Naatanen, R., & Hukki, J. (2002). Auditory ERPs reveal brain dysfunction in infants with plagiocephaly. Journal of Craniofacial Surgery, 13(4), 520–525. doi:10.1097/00001665-200207000-00008
8. Ceponiene, R., Kushnerenko, E., Fellman, V., Renlund, M., Suominen, K., & Naatanen, R. (2002). Event-related potential features indexing central auditory discrimination by newborns. Cognitive Brain Research, 13(1), 101–113. doi:10.1016/S0926-6410(01)00093-3
9. Cheour, M., Kushnerenko, E., Ceponiene, R., Fellman, V., & Naatanen, R. (2002). Electric brain responses obtained from newborn infants to changes in duration in complex harmonic tones. Developmental Neuropsychology, 22(2), 471–479. doi:10.1207/S15326942DN2202_3
10. Kushnerenko, E., Ceponiene, R., Balan, P., Fellman, V., & Naatanen, R. (2002). Maturation of the auditory change-detection response in infants: a longitudinal ERP study. NeuroReport, 13(15), 1843–1848. doi:10.1097/00001756-200210280-00002
11. Kushnerenko, E., Ceponiene, R., Balan, P., Fellman, V., Huotilainen, M., & Naatanen, R. (2002). Maturation of the auditory event-related potentials during the first year of life. NeuroReport, 13, 47–51. doi:10.1097/00001756-200201210-00014
12. Kushnerenko*, E., Ceponiene, R., Fellman, V., Huotilainen, M., & Winkler, I. (2001). Event-related potential correlates of sound duration: similar pattern from birth to adulthood. NeuroReport, 12(17), 3777–3781. doi:10.1097/00001756-200112040-00035
13. Kushnerenko*, E., Cheour, M., Ceponiene, R., Fellman, V., Renlund, M., Soininen, K., et al. (2001). Central auditory processing of durational changes in complex speech patterns by newborns: an event-related brain potential study. Developmental Neuropsychology, 19(1), 85–89.
14. Kushnerenko, E.V., Bystrova, K.S., & Batuev, A.S. (1999). The newborn babies reactions to the olfactory stimuli. [in Russian]. Psychologicheski Zurnal, 4.

• An individual expert in International Tempus project (CD_JEP-25026-2004, establishing MSc program in Neuroscience in Russia)

The component of the event-related potential (ERP) that is elicited in response to any auditory change is known as mismatch negativity (MMN) in adults. The mismatch response was suggested to be a signature of ‘primitive intelligence’ in the auditory cortex, as it became to be called, because it is elicited not only to change in physical characteristics of stimuli, but also to violation of some rule they are following. Formation of the auditory memory trace, pre-attentive sound anticipation, extracting complex regularities in the auditory input, can be tested by mismatch response in adults. In infants, we have demonstrated an early ability to sound-object formation (sound stream segregation, Winkler et al, 2003). However, testing these higher auditory functions, it is very important to rule out every possible contribution of responses evoked by physical sound characteristics, e.g. frequency, duration, intensity. Our methodological study (Ceponiene et al, 2002) has largely contributed to solving this problem, and our recent study revealed more hidden difficulties in studying infants (Kushnerenko et al, 2007). The mismatch response was found to be both of negative and positive polarity depending on stimulus parameters (Kushnerenko et al, 2007) and infants' age (Kushnerenko et al, 2002). Our longitudinal study, testing the same infants from birth to one year of age (Kushnerenko et al, 2002), has revealed a substantial variability of mismatch response from age to age in the same individuals. We suggested that auditory system may not be tuned to different frequencies uniformly in all infants. Therefore, in our latest study we tested broadband stimuli, which resulted in highly reliable and invariant ERP responses in newborns (Kushnerenko et al, 2007). We believe this is a large step towards clinical applications of this method in newborns.