The Lateral Occipital Cortex Is Selective for Object Shape, Not Texture/Color, at Six Months
| Autor: | John E. Richards, Lauren L. Emberson, Richard N. Aslin, Stephen L. Crosswhite |
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| Rok vydání: | 2016 |
| Předmět: |
Male
Aging genetic structures Population 050105 experimental psychology Developmental psychology 03 medical and health sciences 0302 clinical medicine Neuroimaging Visual memory Task Performance and Analysis medicine Humans 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences Early childhood education Child Research Articles education.field_of_study General Neuroscience 05 social sciences Functional specialization Human brain Object (philosophy) eye diseases Form Perception medicine.anatomical_structure Pattern Recognition Visual Child Preschool Human visual system model Female Occipital Lobe Cues Psychology 030217 neurology & neurosurgery Color Perception Photic Stimulation Cognitive psychology |
| Zdroj: | The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience. 37(13) |
| ISSN: | 1529-2401 |
| Popis: | Understanding how the human visual system develops is crucial to understanding the nature and organization of our complex and varied visual representations. However, previous investigations of the development of the visual system using fMRI are primarily confined to a subset of the visual system (high-level vision: faces, scenes) and relatively late in visual development (starting at 4–5 years of age). The current study extends our understanding of human visual development by presenting the first systematic investigation of a mid-level visual region [the lateral occipital cortex (LOC)] in a population much younger than has been investigated in the past: 6 month olds. We use functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), an emerging optical method for recording cortical hemodynamics, to perform neuroimaging with this very young population. Whereas previous fNIRS studies have suffered from imprecise neuroanatomical localization, we rely on the most rigorous MR coregistration of fNIRS data to date to image the infant LOC. We find surprising evidence that at 6 months the LOC has functional specialization that is highly similar to adults. Following Cant and Goodale (2007), we investigate whether the LOC tracks shape information and not other cues to object identity (e.g., texture/material). This finding extends evidence of LOC specialization from early childhood into infancy and earlier than developmental trajectories of high-level visual regions.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTUnderstanding visual development is crucial to understanding the nature of visual representations in the human brain. Previous studies of visual development have investigated children (4 years and older) and high-level visual areas. This study expands our knowledge of visual development by investigating the functional development of mid-level vision [lateral occipital cortex (LOC)] early in infancy. We find surprisingly adult-like functional specialization of the LOC by 6 months of age: infants exhibit shape selectivity, but not object selectivity, in this region. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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