A paper by a research group including Ryuta Kuwamizu (Planned Research Group A01) and Yusuke Moriguchi (Planned Research Group A03) has been published in Communications Psychology, an international journal from Nature Portfolio. Dr. Kuwamizu was formerly a researcher in Group A03 and is now a member of Group A01.

 This study examined 113 children aged 3 to 6 years to investigate the relationship between blink frequency (spontaneous eye-blink rate), executive function (the ability to flexibly switch between rules), and prefrontal cortex activity during a rule-switching task. Children who blinked more often performed better on the task. Blink frequency was also associated with activity in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a region that plays a key role in performing this task.

 Early childhood is a period of major development in executive function, which allows us to flexibly control our behavior and thoughts, and in the prefrontal functions that support it. This study suggests that blinking, an everyday physiological phenomenon, may offer a new clue for understanding the development of executive function and its underlying brain functions in early childhood.

 The paper is open access. We encourage you to read it.

Paper Information

Authors: Ryuta Kuwamizu, Nozomi Yamamoto, Kota Otani, Yusuke Moriguchi

Title: Emergent blink rate in early childhood is associated with neural origins of executive function

Journal: Communications Psychology, Volume 4, Article 126 (2026)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-026-00524-6

Abstract

 Executive function develops rapidly in early childhood and predicts later success in life, yet its neurobiological correlates during this period are not yet well characterised. In adults, executive function is supported by prefrontal–striatal circuits under neuromodulatory control, including dopamine. Here, we show that spontaneous eye-blink rate, a physiological output influenced by neuromodulatory systems, is associated with the developmental trajectory of executive function and prefrontal functional differentiation. We used fNIRS to monitor prefrontal cortex (PFC) activation in 113 children (35–80 months) during a cognitive flexibility task. Older children showed better task performance and greater right-hemisphere and dorsal bias in their PFC activation. Importantly, higher eye-blink rate was also associated with this right-dorsal PFC activation and with better task performance. The current findings demonstrate that emergent eye-blink rate is associated with the neural origins of executive function development in young children. This highlights the potential of eye-blink rate to serve as a unique and previously unrecognised indicator of this critical developmental neural mechanism.

Press Releases

University of Tsukuba

A Blink into Brain Development: Eye-Blink Rate as a Window into Executive Function and Prefrontal Development in Early Childhood

Kyoto University  (in Japanese)

A Blink into Brain Development: Eye-Blink Rate as a Window into Executive Function and Prefrontal Development in Early Childhood