Regions in the Infant Brain are Selective for Visual Targets, such as Faces, at as Early as Two Months

Article: A key brain region responds to faces similarly in infants and adults
Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Published: November 15, 2021 

Stereotyped location of the fusiform face area (FFA) in
the infant brain, similar to location as in the adult brain

The prevailing train of thought among neuroscientists is that it takes several years of visual experience for regions in the developing brain to gradually become selective for their specific targets, whether they be faces, body parts, scenes, etc. This hypothesis had been in part due to difficulties in scanning the brains of younger subjects, such as infants, with the same high-resolution imaging that is conducted for adult subjects. Researchers at MIT built a specialized fMRI scanner and protocols that were both more comfortable for babies (such as custom headphones) as well as provided greater power with an adjustable 32-channel coil, at similar imaging resolution as that found in fMRI used to study adult brains. They then recruited nearly 90 babies for the study, ranging in age from two to nine months. Usable data was collected for 52 of the infants, a higher number than any research lab had been able to scan previously. Half of these infants also contributed higher-resolution data. The findings revealed that specific regions of the infant visual cortex show highly selective responses to faces, body parts, and natural scenes, in the same locations where those responses are seen in the adult brain. The cortical areas studied for processing faces included the fusiform face area (FFA), the occipital face area (OFA), and the anterior temporal lobe (ATL); however, only the FFA showed statistically significant selective responses in the infant brain. First author of the study comments, "A lot of theories have grown up in the field of visual neuroscience to accommodate the view that you need years of development for these specialized regions to emerge. And what we're saying is actually, no, you only really need a couple of months." In terms of the fusiform face area in particular, the researchers plan to further investigate how development progresses from the youngest babies they studied to the oldest. These results also help to inform our understanding of brain development in general, for example, how the brain "builds" sets of functionally distinct regions in more or less the same location in each individual person.

My rating of this study: ⭐⭐⭐

Kosakowski HL, Cohen MA, Takahashi A, et al. "Selective responses to faces, scenes, and bodies in the ventral visual pathway of infants." Current Biology.  15 November 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2021.10.064