When do infants differentiate profile face from frontal face? A near‐infrared spectroscopic study

The objective of the present study was to determine whether a developmental difference occurs in brain activity when infants look at frontal and profile views using near‐infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), which is an optical imaging technique used to measure changes in the concentrations of oxyhemoglobin (oxy‐Hb), deoxyhemoglobin (deoxy‐Hb), and total hemoglobin (total‐Hb). For this objective, we compared NIRS results in two age groups, 5‐ and 8‐month‐old infants, while they were looking at frontal views, profile views, and objects. We found that the concentration of oxy‐Hb and total‐Hb in the 5‐month‐old group increased for only frontal views in the right temporal regions. In contrast, the concentration of oxy‐Hb and total‐Hb in the 8‐month‐old group increased for both frontal and profile views in the right temporal regions. Therefore, the present study indicated that the right hemisphere was dominant for the perception of profile views as well as frontal views. In addition, the most important and interesting finding was that the infants' brain activity of the face area would become view‐invariant at the age of 8 months but not at 5 months. The developmental period for view‐invariant face recognition has been discussed in previous psychological studies, but this is the first objective study to confirm that the period is between 5‐ and 8‐months by measuring the blood flow in the brain using NIRS. Hum Brain Mapp, 2009. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.

[1]  R Kakigi,et al.  Human face perception traced by magneto- and electro-encephalography. , 1999, Brain research. Cognitive brain research.

[2]  Yumiko Otsuka,et al.  Neural activation to upright and inverted faces in infants measured by near infrared spectroscopy , 2007, NeuroImage.

[3]  L B Cohen,et al.  Concept acquisition in the human infant. , 1979, Child development.

[4]  K. Sakatani,et al.  Cerebral blood oxygenation changes induced by auditory stimulation in newborn infants measured by near infrared spectroscopy. , 1999, Early human development.

[5]  H. Abdi,et al.  What Represents a Face? A Computational Approach for the Integration of Physiological and Psychological Data , 1997, Perception.

[6]  N. Kanwisher,et al.  Can generic expertise explain special processing for faces? , 2007, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[7]  T. Allison,et al.  Social perception from visual cues: role of the STS region , 2000, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[8]  V. Bruce,et al.  The basis of the 3/4 view advantage in face recognition , 1987 .

[9]  P. Schyns,et al.  Information and viewpoint dependence in face recognition , 1997, Cognition.

[10]  J. Feldman,et al.  Speed of Processing and Face Recognition at 7 and 12 Months , 2002 .

[11]  H. Jasper,et al.  The ten-twenty electrode system of the International Federation. The International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. , 1999, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology. Supplement.

[12]  Koichi Mori,et al.  Neural Attunement Processes in Infants during the Acquisition of a Language-Specific Phonemic Contrast , 2007, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[13]  Archana K. Singh,et al.  Exploring the false discovery rate in multichannel NIRS , 2006, NeuroImage.

[14]  A. J. Mistlin,et al.  Visual cells in the temporal cortex sensitive to face view and gaze direction , 1985, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological Sciences.

[15]  K. Nakayama,et al.  RESPONSE PROPERTIES OF THE HUMAN FUSIFORM FACE AREA , 2000, Cognitive neuropsychology.

[16]  Janette Atkinson,et al.  Regional Hemodynamic Responses to Visual Stimulation in Awake Infants , 1998, Pediatric Research.

[17]  Kazuo Hiraki,et al.  Infant's brain responses to live and televised action , 2006, NeuroImage.

[18]  Margot J. Taylor,et al.  Source analysis of the N170 to faces and objects , 2004, Neuroreport.

[19]  C. Nelson,et al.  Recognition of the mother's face by six-month-old infants: a neurobehavioral study. , 1997, Child development.

[20]  G. Taga,et al.  Brain imaging in awake infants by near-infrared optical topography , 2003, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[21]  E. Halgren,et al.  Location of human face‐selective cortex with respect to retinotopic areas , 1999, Human brain mapping.

[22]  Frithjof Kruggel,et al.  Age dependency of the hemodynamic response as measured by functional near-infrared spectroscopy , 2003, NeuroImage.

[23]  Martin Wolf,et al.  Hemodynamic response to visual stimulation in newborn infants using functional near‐infrared spectroscopy , 2008, Human brain mapping.

[24]  T. Allison,et al.  Differential Sensitivity of Human Visual Cortex to Faces, Letterstrings, and Textures: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study , 1996, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[25]  N. Kanwisher,et al.  The fusiform face area: a cortical region specialized for the perception of faces , 2006, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[26]  N. Kanwisher,et al.  The M170 is selective for faces, not for expertise , 2005, Neuropsychologia.

[27]  Richard N Aslin,et al.  Near-infrared spectroscopy for functional studies of brain activity in human infants: promise, prospects, and challenges. , 2005, Journal of biomedical optics.

[28]  J. Haxby,et al.  Distinct representations of eye gaze and identity in the distributed human neural system for face perception , 2000, Nature Neuroscience.

[29]  Koji Inui,et al.  Temporal dynamics of neural adaptation effect in the human visual ventral stream , 2005 .

[30]  O. Pascalis,et al.  Long-Term Recognition Memory for Faces Assessed by Visual Paired Comparison in 3- and 6-Month-Old Infants , 1998 .

[31]  C. Nelson,et al.  Brain activity differentiates face and object processing in 6-month-old infants. , 1999, Developmental psychology.

[32]  T. Wilcox,et al.  Using near-infrared spectroscopy to assess neural activation during object processing in infants. , 2005, Journal of biomedical optics.

[33]  T. Allison,et al.  Temporal Cortex Activation in Humans Viewing Eye and Mouth Movements , 1998, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[34]  Timothy J. Andrews,et al.  Distinct representations for facial identity and changeable aspects of faces in the human temporal lobe , 2004, NeuroImage.

[35]  S. de Schonen,et al.  Hemispheric asymmetry in a face discrimination task in infants. , 1990, Child development.

[36]  Kazuo Hiraki,et al.  Sustained decrease in oxygenated hemoglobin during video games in the dorsal prefrontal cortex: A NIRS study of children , 2006, NeuroImage.

[37]  Y Yonekura,et al.  A rapid brain metabolic change in infants detected by fMRI , 1997, Neuroreport.

[38]  R. Homan,et al.  Cerebral location of international 10-20 system electrode placement. , 1987, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[39]  J. Fagan.  Infants' recognition of invariant features of faces , 1976 .

[40]  N. Kanwisher,et al.  The Neural Basis of the Behavioral Face-Inversion Effect , 2005, Current Biology.

[41]  N. Kanwisher,et al.  The Fusiform Face Area: A Module in Human Extrastriate Cortex Specialized for Face Perception , 1997, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[42]  J. Mehler,et al.  Sounds and silence: An optical topography study of language recognition at birth , 2003, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[43]  David A. Boas,et al.  Assessing infants' cortical response to speech using near-infrared spectroscopy , 2007, NeuroImage.

[44]  Hugo Lagercrantz,et al.  Activation of Olfactory Cortex in Newborn Infants After Odor Stimulation: A Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Study , 2000, Pediatric Research.