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Updated: Aug 8, 2026
Cortical Source Analysis of High-Density EEG Recordings in Children
Published on: June 30, 2014
Event-related brain potentials to human faces in infants
Insights
Infants can remember and distinguish faces, showing distinct brain responses. Event-related potentials (ERPs) reveal early cognitive development in infants, independent of motor skills.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Psychology
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Event-related potentials (ERPs) are crucial for understanding cognitive processes.
- Infant cognitive development research often relies on behavioral observation.
- The Nc wave is associated with attention-getting or interesting events.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate infant cognitive development using ERPs.
- To determine if infants can discriminate between familiar and novel faces.
- To identify the earliest ERP components related to cognitive processing in infants.
Main Methods:
- Recorded ERPs in 4-7-month-old infants viewing frequently and infrequently presented faces.
- Utilized tachistoscopic presentation of human face photographs.
- Analyzed long-latency negative (Nc) and positive (Pc) ERP waves.
Main Results:
- The infrequently presented face elicited higher amplitude and longer latency Nc waves compared to the frequent face.
- These Nc wave differences suggest infants' ability to remember and discriminate faces.
- Pc wave differences between frequent and infrequent faces were not significant; P3 waves were not observed.
Conclusions:
- ERPs, specifically the Nc wave, offer a sensitive method for studying infant cognitive development.
- Infant cognitive processes, like face recognition, can be assessed without motor responses.
- The Nc wave appears to be the earliest ERP component linked to cognitive processing in human development.
Abstract:
Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in response to tachistoscopically presented photographs of 2 human faces were recorded for 4--7-month-old infants. For each infant 1 face was chosen to be presented frequently (p = .88, a low-information event) and the other infrequently (p = .12, a high-information event). Both types of events elicited in our infants a long-latency negative ERP wave (ca. 700 msec), termed Nc, and a long-latency positive wave (ca. 1,360 msec), termed Pc. We found that the discrepant, infrequently presented face elicited Nc waves which were higher in amplitude and longer in latency than those elicited by the frequent face. These differences suggest that our infants were able to remember the frequently presented face from trial to trial and to discriminate it from the discrepant face. The discrepant event elicited Pc waves which were insignificantly higher in amplitude than those elicited by frequent events. In adults and children, discrepant events have been found by numerous researchers to elicit positive P3 waves (latency ca. 300--800 msec). In our study, however, such waves could not be discerned. So, of all of the ERP waves which have been related to cognitive processes, the wave which is maturationally the earliest to appear is the Nc wave, which has been related to the perception of attention-getting events or events of interest to the subject. Our findings suggest that ERP responses could provide a sensitive means for investigating infant cognitive development since they do not depend upon an integrated motor-response system.
