The nature of general visual category representations for various object categories in 6- to 8-month-old infants CurrentBiology FU_Berlin univienna HumboldtUni development infants brain vision
By Dr. Liji Thomas, MDJan 9 2023Reviewed by Danielle Ellis, B.Sc. The human brain creates visual categories as a fundamental aspect of cognition. Infancy is a crucial period of life for such representations to be built up, but these are as yet unknown. A recent study shows how visual categories are represented in human infant brains using electroencephalography and how these correspond to adult brain representations.
The current study, published in Current Biology, set out to do this. Here, the scientists performed multivariate analysis on a multivariate classification framework and compared infant and adult EEG quantitative data and deep learning models. With adults, the curve was first seen at 70 msec, peaked at 154 msec, and thus showed acceleration compared to infants. This could be due to the longer latent periods required even at early cortical processing in infancy, causing a delay in the P100 component peak. In addition, the mean ERP peak showed a delay of up to 242 msec.
However, as with adults, the representations were classified most accurately along the diagonal timelines. In contrast, feedforward and feedback information was incompletely processed in the immature brains of infants. Of course, this could also be traceable to the divergences in experimental task design or the signal-to-noise ratio . However, this was less likely because of the focus on peaks.
Spatial frequencies are better correlated with categories in adults than infants, showing that the former relies more on such frequencies. Moreover, the differences in representation in adults vs. children were observed despite similar EEG power spectra profiles or categories. Adults showed a broadband spectrum of neural oscillations during these representations, compared to the theta band being the distinctive infant signature for visual category representation.
What are the implications? "In sum, the emerging picture is one of not yet fully developed dynamics of adult-like visual category representations in infants." That is, infants developed representations later after exposure, at slower speeds, and did not have some aspects of feedforward and recurrent processing. This could be due to incomplete myelin development and poor synaptic connections formed in the infant's brain compared to the adult brain.
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