Rodman H R, Skelly J P, Gross C G
Department of Psychology, Princeton University, NJ 08544.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1991 Sep 1;88(17):7572-5. doi: 10.1073/pnas.88.17.7572.
Inferior temporal cortex is necessary for visual object recognition in adult primates but is less critical in infants. Nonetheless, in macaques as young as 6 weeks old, inferior temporal neurons showed adult-like visual response properties, including form selectivity and bilateral receptive fields, indicating that extended maturation and visual experience may not be necessary for adult-like encoding of complex objects. However, before the animals were 4 months old, visual responsiveness was found in inferior temporal cortex only in awake monkeys performing a behavioral task and not in anesthetized ones, suggesting that extraretinal factors profoundly influence function in "association" cortex in developing as well as mature animals.
颞下皮质对成年灵长类动物的视觉物体识别是必需的，但对婴儿而言重要性较低。尽管如此，在6周大的猕猴中，颞下神经元表现出类似成年动物的视觉反应特性，包括形状选择性和双侧感受野，这表明复杂物体的类似成年动物的编码可能不需要长时间的成熟过程和视觉经验。然而，在这些动物4个月大之前，仅在执行行为任务的清醒猴子的颞下皮质中发现了视觉反应性，而在麻醉的猴子中未发现，这表明视网膜外因素对发育中和成年动物的“联合”皮质功能有深远影响。
