Journal
CEREBRAL CORTEX
Volume 21, Issue 1, Pages 191-199Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS INC
DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhq078
Keywords
development; fMRI; fusiform gyrus; pruning
Categories
Funding
- National Research Service Award [HD057758]
- National Institutes of Health [HD057173, HD064636-01]
- Institut National de la Sante et de la Recherche Medicale
- Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique
- James S. McDonnell Centennial Fellowship
- EUNICE KENNEDY SHRIVER NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF CHILD HEALTH & HUMAN DEVELOPMENT [R01HD064636, R01HD057173] Funding Source: NIH RePORTER
- EUNICE KENNEDY SHRIVER NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF CHILD HEALTH &HUMAN DEVELOPMENT [F32HD057758] Funding Source: NIH RePORTER
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Regions of human ventral extrastriate visual cortex develop specializations for natural categories (e.g., faces) and cultural artifacts (e.g., words). In adults, category-based specializations manifest as greater neural responses in visual regions of the brain (e.g., fusiform gyrus) to some categories over others. However, few studies have examined how these specializations originate in the brains of children. Moreover, it is as yet unknown whether the development of visual specializations hinges on increases in the response to the preferred categories, decreases in the responses to nonpreferred categories, or both. This question is relevant to a long-standing debate concerning whether neural development is driven by building up or pruning back representations. To explore these questions, we measured patterns of visual activity in 4-year-old children for 4 categories (faces, letters, numbers, and shoes) using functional magnetic resonance imaging. We report 2 key findings regarding the development of visual categories in the brain: 1) the categories faces and symbols doubly dissociate in the fusiform gyrus before children can read and 2) the development of category-specific responses in young children depends on cortical responses to nonpreferred categories that decrease as preferred category knowledge is acquired.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available