Visual category-selectivity for faces, places and objects emerges along different developmental trajectories.
The organization of category-selective regions in ventral visual cortex is well characterized in human adults. We investigated a crucial, previously unaddressed, question about how this organization emerges developmentally. We contrasted the developmental trajectories for face-, object-, and place-selective activation in the ventral visual cortex in children, adolescents, and adults. Although children demonstrated adult-like organization in object- and place-related cortex, as a group they failed to show consistent face-selective activation in classical face regions. The lack of a consistent neural signature for faces was attributable to (1) reduced face-selectivity and extent of activation within the regions that will become the FFA, OFA, and STS in adults, and (2) smaller volumes and considerable variability in the locus of face-selective activation in individual children. In contrast, adolescents showed an adult-like pattern of face-selective activation, although it was more right-lateralized. These findings reveal critical age-related differences in the emergence of category-specific functional organization in the visual cortex and support a model of brain development in which specialization emerges from interactions between experience-dependent learning and the maturing brain.
Scherf
K Suzanne
KS
Department of Psychiatry, Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, University of Pittsburgh, 3811 O'Hara Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA. scherf@pitt.edu
Behrmann
Marlene
M
Humphreys
Kate
K
Luna
Beatriz
B
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000375:Aging; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003423:Critical Period, Psychological; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology*