title: Functional development of the brain's face-processing system.
abstract: In the first 20 years of life, the human brain undergoes tremendous growth in size, weight, and synaptic connectedness. Over the same time period, a person achieves remarkable transformations in perception, thought, and behavior. One important area of development is face processing ability, or the ability to quickly and accurately extract extensive information about a person's identity, emotional state, attractiveness, intention, and numerous other types of information that are crucial to everyday social interaction and communication. Associating particular brain changes with specific behavioral and intellectual developments has historically been a serious challenge for researchers. Fortunately, modern neuroimaging is dramatically advancing our ability to make associations between morphological and behavioral developments. In this article, we demonstrate how neuroimaging has revolutionized our understanding of the development of face processing ability to show that this essential perceptual and cognitive skill matures consistently yet slowly over the first two decades of life. In this manner, face processing is a model system of many areas of complex cognitive development. WIREs Cogn Sci 2017, 8:e1423. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1423 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA.|Center for Human Development, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA.|Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Frank
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Haist
authors.affiliation: Center for Human Development, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Gizelle
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Anzures
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000254:growth & development* / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods*; D002648:Child; D004569:Electroencephalography; D000066499:Facial Recognition / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D055815:Young Adult