Kuefner Dana, de Heering Adélaïde, Jacques Corentin, Palmero-Soler Ernesto, Rossion Bruno
Unité Cognition et Développement and Laboratoire de Neurophysiologie, Université Catholique de Louvain Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2010 Jan 6;3:67. doi: 10.3389/neuro.09.067.2009. eCollection 2010.
Whether the development of face recognition abilities truly reflects changes in how faces, specifically, are perceived, or rather can be attributed to more general perceptual or cognitive development, is debated. Event-related potential (ERP) recordings on the scalp offer promise for this issue because they allow brain responses to complex visual stimuli to be relatively well isolated from other sensory, cognitive and motor processes. ERP studies in 5- to 16-year-old children report large age-related changes in amplitude, latency (decreases) and topographical distribution of the early visual components, the P1 and the occipito-temporal N170. To test the face specificity of these effects, we recorded high-density ERPs to pictures of faces, cars, and their phase-scrambled versions from 72 children between the ages of 4 and 17, and a group of adults. We found that none of the previously reported age-dependent changes in amplitude, latency or topography of the P1 or N170 were specific to faces. Most importantly, when we controlled for age-related variations of the P1, the N170 appeared remarkably similar in amplitude and topography across development, with much smaller age-related decreases in latencies than previously reported. At all ages the N170 showed equivalent face-sensitivity: it had the same topography and right hemisphere dominance, it was absent for meaningless (scrambled) stimuli, and larger and earlier for faces than cars. The data also illustrate the large amount of inter-individual and inter-trial variance in young children's data, which causes the N170 to merge with a later component, the N250, in grand-averaged data. Based on our observations, we suggest that the previously reported "bi-fid" N170 of young children is in fact the N250. Overall, our data indicate that the electrophysiological markers of face-sensitive perceptual processes are present from 4 years of age and do not appear to change throughout development.
人脸识别能力的发展究竟是真正反映了面部感知方式的变化，特别是对面部的感知，还是更应归因于更一般的感知或认知发展，这一问题存在争议。头皮上的事件相关电位（ERP）记录为解决这个问题带来了希望，因为它们能使大脑对复杂视觉刺激的反应相对较好地与其他感觉、认知和运动过程隔离开来。对5至16岁儿童的ERP研究报告称，早期视觉成分P1和枕颞N170的振幅、潜伏期（缩短）和地形分布存在与年龄相关的显著变化。为了测试这些效应的面部特异性，我们记录了72名4至17岁儿童以及一组成年人观看面部、汽车及其相位打乱版本图片时的高密度ERP。我们发现，之前报道的P1或N170在振幅、潜伏期或地形方面与年龄相关的变化，没有一个是面部特有的。最重要的是，当我们控制了与年龄相关的P1变化后，N170在整个发育过程中的振幅和地形表现出惊人的相似性，与之前报道相比，潜伏期与年龄相关的缩短幅度要小得多。在所有年龄段，N170都表现出相同的面部敏感性：它具有相同的地形和右半球优势，对无意义（打乱）刺激无反应，对面部的反应比对汽车更大且更早。数据还表明，幼儿数据中存在大量个体间和试验间的差异，这导致在总体平均数据中N170与后期成分N250合并。基于我们的观察，我们认为之前报道的幼儿“双峰”N170实际上是N250。总体而言，我们的数据表明，对面部敏感的感知过程的电生理标记从4岁起就存在，并且在整个发育过程中似乎没有变化。
Zotero 插件
