CiPsi, School of Psychology, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal.
Section on Analytical and Functional Biophotonics, Maternal-Fetal Medicine, Imaging, and Behavioral Development, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, USA.
Neuropsychologia. 2020 Dec;149:107668. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107668. Epub 2020 Nov 1.
Biological motion perception-our capacity to perceive the intrinsic motion of humans and animals-has been implicated as a precursor of social development in infancy. In the adult brain, several biological motion neural correlates have been identified; of particular importance, the right posterior superior temporal sulcus (rpSTS). We present a study, conducted with fNIRS, which measured brain activations in infants' right posterior temporal region to point-light walkers, a standard stimulus category of biological motion perception studies. Seven-month-old infants (n = 23) participated in a within-subject blocked design with three experimental conditions and one baseline. Infants viewed: an intact upright point-light walker of a person approaching the observer; the same point-light walker stimulus but inverted; and a selected frame from the point-light walker stimulus, approaching the viewer at constant velocity with no articulated motion, close to object motion. We found activations for both the upright and the inverted point-light walkers. The rigid moving point-light walker frame did not elicit any response consistent with a functional activation in this region. Our results suggest that biological motion is processed differently in the right middle posterior temporal cortex in infancy, and that articulated motion is a critical feature in biological motion processing at this early age.
生物运动知觉——我们感知人类和动物内在运动的能力——被认为是婴儿期社会发展的前兆。在成人的大脑中，已经确定了几个生物运动的神经相关物；特别重要的是，右侧后颞上沟（rpSTS）。我们提出了一项使用功能性近红外光谱（fNIRS）进行的研究，该研究测量了婴儿右侧颞区对光点步行者的大脑激活，光点步行者是生物运动知觉研究的标准刺激类别。7 个月大的婴儿（n=23）参与了一项基于个体的组块设计实验，有三个实验组和一个对照组。婴儿观看了以下三种实验条件：一个完整的、直立的、向观察者移动的光点步行者；同样的光点步行者刺激物，但倒转了；以及一个从光点步行者刺激物中选择的接近观察者的帧，以恒定速度接近，没有任何关节运动，接近物体运动。我们发现，无论是直立的还是倒置的光点步行者，都能引起激活。刚性移动的光点步行者帧没有引起任何与该区域功能激活一致的反应。我们的结果表明，在婴儿时期，右侧中颞后皮质对生物运动的处理方式不同，并且在这个早期阶段，关节运动是生物运动处理的一个关键特征。
