Normalization of EEG activity among previously institutionalized children placed into foster care: A 12-year follow-up of the Bucharest Early Intervention Project

•Reports EEG activity from 12-year wave of the Bucharest Early Intervention Project.•Intervention effects in neural activity persist from 8-year wave to 12-year wave.•Foster care children have greater alpha power compared to care-as-usual children.•Stable foster care placement showed greater beta power versus disrupted placements.

Extreme social and cognitive deprivation as a result of institutional care has profound effects on developmental outcomes across multiple domains for many abandoned or orphaned children. The Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP) examines the outcomes for children originally placed in institutions who were assessed comprehensively and then randomized to foster care (FCG) or care as usual (CAUG) and followed longitudinally. Here we report on the brain electrical activity (electroencephalogram: EEG) of 12-year-old children enrolled in the BEIP. Previous reports suggested improvement in resting EEG activity for the group of children placed in the foster care intervention, particularly those placed before 24 months of age compared to children who were randomized to CAUG or those placed into families after this age. At 12 years, differences between those in the FCG and those in the CAUG persist in the alpha band (8–13 Hz), but not in higher frequency bands (i.e. in the beta band; 15–30 Hz), except in those children placed into the FCG who remained in high quality care environments over the course of the study. These findings highlight the importance of maintaining a stable high quality caregiving environment, particularly for children exposed to early psychosocial deprivation, for promoting healthy brain development.