title: Orientation discrimination and cortical function in the human newborn.
abstract: There is some controversy concerning whether or not the visual abilities of the newborn are mediated entirely through subcortical pathways or whether the visual cortex is functioning at birth. A critical test of cortical functioning is discrimination of orientation: orientation-selective neurons are found in the visual cortex but not in subcortical parts of the visual system. An experiment is described in which newborn infants were habituated to a square-wave grating oriented 45 degrees from vertical. After habituation, significant preferences for the novel, mirror-image, grating were found, a result which argues for some degree of visual cortical functioning at birth.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Washington Singer Laboratories, University of Exeter, UK.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Slater
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Morison
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Somers
mesh_terms: D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D004193:Discrimination Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D005556:Form Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D006185:Habituation, Psychophysiologic / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007231:Infant, Newborn / Q000502:physiology*; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology*; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D014795:Visual Pathways / Q000502:physiology