title: Changes in cortical thickness in 6-year-old children open their mind to a global vision of the world.
abstract: Even if objectively presented with similar visual stimuli, children younger than 6 years of age exhibit a strong attraction to local visual information (e.g., the trees), whereas children older than 6 years of age, similar to adults, exhibit a visual bias toward global information (e.g., the forest). Here, we studied the cortical thickness changes that underlie this bias shift from local to global visual information. Two groups, matched for age, gender, and handedness, were formed from a total of 30 children who were 6 years old, and both groups performed a traditional global/local visual task. The first group presented a local visual bias, and the other group presented a global visual bias. The results indicated that, compared with the local visual bias group, children with a global visual bias exhibited (1) decreased cortical thickness in the bilateral occipital regions and (2) increased cortical thickness in the left frontoparietal regions. These findings constitute the first structural study that supports the view that both synaptic pruning (i.e., decreased cortical thickness) and expansion mechanisms (i.e., increased cortical thickness) cooccur to allow healthy children to develop a global perception of the visual world.
authors.affiliation: LaPsyDÉ, UMR 8240, CNRS, Université Paris Descartes and Université de Caen, Sorbonne, 46 rue Saint-Jacques, 75005 Paris, France ; Institut Universitaire de France, 75005 Paris, France.
authors.forename: Nicolas
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Poirel
authors.affiliation: ISTS, UMR 6301, CNRS, CEA, 14000 Caen, France ; CHU de Caen, Service de Psychiatrie, Centre Esquirol, 14074 Caen, France.
authors.forename: Elise
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Leroux
authors.affiliation: LaPsyDÉ, UMR 8240, CNRS, Université Paris Descartes and Université de Caen, Sorbonne, 46 rue Saint-Jacques, 75005 Paris, France.
authors.forename: Arlette
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pineau
authors.affiliation: LaPsyDÉ, UMR 8240, CNRS, Université Paris Descartes and Université de Caen, Sorbonne, 46 rue Saint-Jacques, 75005 Paris, France ; Institut Universitaire de France, 75005 Paris, France.
authors.forename: Olivier
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Houdé
authors.affiliation: LaPsyDÉ, UMR 8240, CNRS, Université Paris Descartes and Université de Caen, Sorbonne, 46 rue Saint-Jacques, 75005 Paris, France.
authors.forename: Grégory
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Simon
mesh_terms: D001519:Behavior; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*
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