Cortical route for facelike pattern processing in human newborns.

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Developmental Psychology
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Adults possess specialized brain regions for face detection.
• Newborns exhibit an innate preference for orienting towards faces, even schematic ones.
• The neural basis of this early face preference remains largely unknown.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether the adult face-processing cortical network is already active in newborns.
• To explore the neural substrates underlying the early preferential orientation to faces in human infants.

Main Methods:

• Electroencephalography (EEG) was used to measure brain responses in 1- to 4-day-old newborns.
• Schematic facelike and nonfacelike patterns were presented using a slow oscillatory "peekaboo" dynamic (0.8 Hz) in a frequency-tagging design.
• EEG power spectrum analysis at the stimulation frequency was used to estimate frequency-tagged responses.

Main Results:

• Upright facelike stimuli evoked significantly stronger EEG responses compared to inverted control stimuli across multiple electrodes.
• Source reconstruction identified a partially right-lateralized network, including lateral occipitotemporal and medial parietal areas.
• The activated brain regions overlapped with known adult face-processing circuits.

Conclusions:

• The findings suggest that the specialized cortical pathway for face processing is functional at birth in humans.
• This indicates that the neural architecture for face detection is largely innate rather than solely developed through experience.
• Human newborns possess a pre-existing neural system for prioritizing face-like stimuli.