Infants' cortical processing of biological motion configuration - A fNIRS study

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Developmental Psychology
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Biological motion perception is vital for social cognition.
• The right posterior Superior Temporal Sulcus (rpSTS) is crucial for biological motion in adults.
• Infant research on rpSTS and biological motion is limited, primarily using behavioral methods.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the role of the right STS in processing biological motion in 7-8-month-old infants.
• To examine neural activation patterns in response to coherent versus scrambled point-light-walker stimuli.
• To determine if the rpSTS shows early functional specialization for biological motion configuration.

Main Methods:

• Used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to measure brain activity in the rSTS region.
• Presented 7-8-month-old infants with coherent point-light-walker (PLW) and scrambled PLW stimuli.
• Measured changes in oxygenated hemoglobin (HbO2) concentration as an indicator of neural activation.

Main Results:

• Found significant HbO2 increase in the right middle-posterior temporal cortex for coherent PLW stimuli.
• Observed statistically significant differences in activation between coherent and scrambled PLW conditions.
• No significant neural activation was detected when infants viewed the scrambled motion.

Conclusions:

• The right STS is sensitive to the global configuration of human movement in infants.
• Functional specialization of the rSTS for biological motion processing emerges as early as 7-8 months of age.
• This finding highlights the early development of social-cognitive abilities related to action perception.