Human infants dissociate structural and dynamic information in biological motion: evidence from neural systems

This study investigates how human infants process and interpret human movement. Neural correlates to the perception of (i) possible biomechanical motion, (ii) impossible biomechanical motion and (iii) biomechanically possible motion but nonhuman 'corrupted' body schema were assessed in infants of 8 months. Analysis of event-related potentials resulting from the passive viewing of these point-light displays (PLDs) indicated a larger positive amplitude over parietal channels between 300 and 700 ms for observing biomechanically impossible PLDs when compared with other conditions. An early negative activation over frontal channels between 200 and 350 ms dissociated schematically impossible PLDs from other conditions. These results show that in infants, different cognitive systems underlie the processing of structural and dynamic features by 8 months of age.