Dorsal stream development in motion and structure-from-motion perception

Abstract

(2008). Dorsal stream development in motion and structure-from-motion perception. NeuroImage, 39(4): [1815][1816][1817][1818][1819][1820][1821][1822][1823] Little is known about the neural development underlying high order visual perception. For example, in detection of structures by coherently moving dots, motion information must interact with shape-based information to enable object recognition. Tasks involving these different motion-based discriminations are known to activate distinct specialized brain areas in adults. Here, we investigate neural development of normally developing children using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during perception of randomly moving point-light dots (RM), coherently moving dots that formed a 3D rotating object (SFM) and static dots. Perception of RM enhanced neural activity as compared with static dots in motion processing-related visual areas, including visual area 3a (V3a), and middle temporal area (hMT+) in 10 adults (age 20-30 years). Children (age 5-6 years) showed less pronounced activity in area V3a than adults. Perception of SFM induced enhanced neural activity as compared to RM in adults in the left parietal shape area (PSA), whereas children increased neural activity within dorsal (V3a) and ventral brain areas (lingual gyrus) of the occipital cortex. These findings provide evidence of neural development within the dorsal pathway. First, maturation was associated with enhanced activity in specialized areas within the dorsal pathway during RM perception (V3a) and SFM perception (PSA). Secondly, high order visual perception-related neural development was associated with a shift in neural activity from low level shape and motion specialized areas in children, including partially immature area V3a, to high order areas in the parietal lobule (PSA) in adults.

Role of dorsal and ventral stream development in biological motion perception

“…-3 -In this study, we used event-related fMRI to examine for the first time the functional development of extrastriate areas involved in BM processing by comparing the activation patterns of 5-to-7-year-old children and adults. Based upon neuroimaging results [14] of dorsal and ventral stream development we hypothesize that for BM processing in children as young as those in our group functional activity within dorsal regions may be substituted for the engagement of networks within the ventral stream, which are known to mature earlier [16]. With accumulated experience and maturation, dorsal regions then become increasingly involved in BM processing.…”

“…Following recent studies that have tested the possibility of generalizing results across age for adults and 6 and 7 year old children we transferred the functional and anatomical data of adults and children into a common stereotactic space [14,18]. for the covariates BM, BM_s, SM and SM_s were obtained in each subject while using a temporal high-pass filter (cut-off 128s) and modelling temporal autocorrelation as an AR (1) process.…”

“…These results also indicate that ventral stream functioning is not mature at preschool age. Studies on the development of visual motion processing report that both activation pattern [14,15] and electrophysiological responses [15] develop up to adolescence, suggesting that functional dorsal stream development also undergoes substantial progression from infancy to adulthood. -3 -In this study, we used event-related fMRI to examine for the first time the functional development of extrastriate areas involved in BM processing by comparing the activation patterns of 5-to-7-year-old children and adults.…”

Unravelling the development of the visual cortex: implications for plasticity and repair

“…In normally developing children, the parsing of the visual array into globally organized forms appears to develop more securely than the equivalent parsing by relative motion (Klaver et al 2008). Numerous reports of elevated global motion thresholds across a variety of neurodevelopmental disorders have prompted researchers to suggest that abnormalities in global motion perception are a result of a general deficiency in the dorsal visual pathway (Pellicano et al 2005).…”

Occipital cortical thickness in very low birth weight born adolescents predicts altered neural specialization of visual semantic category related neural networks

“…Functional brain imaging studies revealed enhanced dorsal visual stream activity in adults compared to children related to motion defined visual perception as well as visuospatial memory and attention Klingberg, 2006;. By contrast object recognition related activity in the ventral stream showed reduced activity related to unspecific object categories (Cantlon et al, 2011;Golarai et al, 2007;Klaver et al, 2008;Lichtensteiger et al, 2008;Passarotti, Smith, DeLano, & Huang, 2007;Peelen et al, 2009). It was suggested that neural tuning may increase neural specificity towards specialized object categories in the ventral stream (Grill-Spector, Golarai, & Gabrieli, 2008), whereas dorsal stream enhancement may reflect consolidation mediated specialization .…”