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Updated: Jul 27, 2026
Gaze in Action: Head-mounted Eye Tracking of Children's Dynamic Visual Attention During Naturalistic Behavior
Published on: November 14, 2018
Functional maturation in visual pathways predicts attention to the eyes in infant rhesus macaques: Effects of social
Aiden Ford1, Zsofia A Kovacs-Balint2, Arick Wang3
1Neuroscience Program, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA; Marcus Autism Center, USA.
Insights
Early visual brain network maturation influences infant eye-looking behavior, crucial for social development. This research links visual pathway connectivity to early social attention in infants, offering insights into neurodevelopmental trajectories.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Psychology
- Primate Models
Background:
- Eye-gaze differences are early markers for social difficulties in neurodevelopmental disorders.
- The relationship between early visual experiences and infant brain network maturation is not well understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how functional connectivity in the ventral visual pathway relates to the development of social visual attention in infants.
- To explore the neural underpinnings of early eye-looking behaviors in infant rhesus macaques.
Main Methods:
- Longitudinal, densely sampled eye-tracking and resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) data were collected from infant rhesus macaques from birth to 6 months.
- Functional connectivity (FC) within the ventral visual object pathway was analyzed.
- Brain-behavior relationships were tested using individual trajectories.
Main Results:
- Infants with increased FC between left V1 to V3 visual areas showed earlier increases in eye-looking before 2 months.
- This association was moderated by social status, with lower-status infants showing a stronger link between V1-V3 connectivity and eye-looking.
Conclusions:
- Maturation of the visual object pathway is a key neural substrate for developing social visual attention in infancy.
- These findings provide insights into the early neural mechanisms supporting social development and potential markers for neurodevelopmental differences.
Abstract:
Differences in looking at the eyes of others are one of the earliest behavioral markers for social difficulties in neurodevelopmental disabilities, including autism. However, it is unknown how early visuo-social experiences relate to the maturation of infant brain networks that process visual social stimuli. We investigated functional connectivity (FC) within the ventral visual object pathway as a contributing neural system. Densely sampled, longitudinal eye-tracking and resting state fMRI (rs-fMRI) data were collected from infant rhesus macaques, an important model of human social development, from birth through 6 months of age. Mean trajectories were fit for both datasets and individual trajectories from subjects with both eye-tracking and rs-fMRI data were used to test for brain-behavior relationships. Exploratory findings showed infants with greater increases in FC between left V1 to V3 visual areas have an earlier increase in eye-looking before 2 months. This relationship was moderated by social status such that infants with low social status had a stronger association between left V1 to V3 connectivity and eye-looking than high status infants. Results indicated that maturation of the visual object pathway may provide an important neural substrate supporting adaptive transitions in social visual attention during infancy.
