The development of face and location processing: an fMRI study

Abstract

Although a few developmental fMRI studies have shed some light on the neurological development of either object or spatial processing we still know very little about the development of the 'what' and 'where' processing systems. The present study is the first to address this issue by comparing, concurrently and within the same behavioral paradigm, patterns of functional activation for face processing and location processing in 12 children (10-12 years old) and 16 adults. For both tasks this study found a developmental shift from a more distributed pattern of activation in children to a more focused pattern of activation in adults. Furthermore, the type of developmental redistribution of activation in children varied depending on the task. The present findings have important implications for theories of visuospatial development. They suggest that the neural systems involved in face and location processing may undergo development and fine-tuning well into late childhood.

Weaker top–down modulation from the left inferior frontal gyrus in children

“…Previous studies have shown a more diffused and distributed pattern of activation in children compared to focused patterns of activation in adults in both linguistic and perceptual (face and object) tasks (Booth et al, 2004;Brown et al, 2005;Casey et al, 2002;Durston et al, 2005;Gaillard et al, 2000;Hertz-Pannier et al, 1997;Passarotti et al, 2003). ERP studies have also shown that neuronal regions are more broadly tuned in young children compared to adults (de Haan et al, 1998;Neville et al, 1992).…”

“…This is analogous to the process of tuning the response properties of single neurons. According to this account, the process of narrowing the response properties facilitates speed of processing for the stimuli or task for which it becomes specialized (Johnson, 2000), and mediates the emergence of greater behavioral expertise and efficiency (Gathers et al, 2004;Gauthier and Nelson, 2001;Passarotti et al, 2003). It has been further suggested that the process of finetuning cortical regions results from changing interactions with other brain regions (Johnson, 2001), and specifically with the recruitment of top-down control mechanisms operating from prefrontal regions to posterior regions (Brown et al, 2005;Casey et al, 2005).…”

fMRI reveals alteration of spatial working memory networks across adolescence

“…Because regression analyses indicated a change in location of parietal activation across adolescence (see Results), an ROI based on the average activation map for the whole group would not accurately represent regions used for the task in both young and old teens (Passarotti et al, 2003). Therefore, we divided teens on age with median (14.93 years) split, and determined significant clusters activated by the task in young and old teens separately using single sample t tests (cluster volume ≥ 943 microliters, p < .05).…”

Developmental shifts in cortical loci for face and object recognition

“…Further controversy focuses on whether the functional organization of the ventral processing stream is predetermined and established early [5][6][7] or sculpted by experience and learning over time [8,9]. Farah [5] and Gilchrist and McKone [6] propose early established (prior to age 3) face and object recognition systems whereas both Carver [10] and Passarrotti et al [9] suggest changing neural architecture from childhood to adulthood [9,10].…”