title: Neural Mechanisms of Body Awareness in Infants.
abstract: The ability to differentiate one's body from others is a fundamental aspect of social perception and has been shown to involve the integration of sense modalities attributable to the self. Though behavioral studies in infancy have investigated infants' discrimination of body-related multisensory stimuli, whether they attribute this information as belonging to the self is still unknown. In human adults, neuroimaging studies have demonstrated the recruitment of a specific set of brain regions in response to body-related multisensory integration. To test whether the infant brain integrates this information similarly to adults, in a first functional near-infrared spectroscopy study we investigated the role of visual-proprioceptive feedback when temporal cues are manipulated by showing 5-month-old infants an online video of their own face while the infant was performing movements. To explore the role of body-related contingency further, in a second study we investigated whether cortical activation in response to self-initiated movements and external tactile stimulation was similar to that found in the first study. Our results indicate that infants' specialized cortical activation in response to body-related contingencies is similar to brain activation seen in response to body awareness in adults.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development.
authors.forename: M L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Filippetti
authors.affiliation: Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Lloyd-Fox
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological Sciences, University of London, Birkbeck, UK.
authors.forename: M R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Longo
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Psicologia dello Sviluppo e della Socializzazione, University of Padua, Padua, Italy.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Farroni
authors.affiliation: Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development.
authors.forename: M H
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Johnson
mesh_terms: D001364:Awareness / Q000502:physiology*; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D056228:Feedback, Sensory / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D011434:Proprioception / Q000502:physiology; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D012649:Self Concept; D019265:Spectroscopy, Near-Infrared; D055698:Touch Perception / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology
keywords: body awareness; cognitive development; infant development; multisensory integration; near-infrared spectroscopy