Babies Are Prewired To Perceive the World (scientificamerican.com) 23
In an investigation of neural connectivity in 30 infants ranging from six to 57 days old (with an average age of 27 days), neuroscientists found that circuit wiring precedes, and thus may guide, regional specialization, shedding light on how knowledge systems emerge in the brain. An anonymous reader shares a report from Scientific American: In the study, published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, the researchers looked at two of the best-studied brain networks dedicated to a particular visual function -- one that underlies face recognition and another that processes scenes. The occipital face area and fusiform face area selectively respond to faces and are highly connected in adults, suggesting they constitute a face-recognition network. The same description applies to the parahippocampal place area and retrosplenial complex but for scenes. All four of these areas are in the inferior temporal cortex, which is behind the ear in humans. The team used a technique called resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI), which measures the level of synchronization of activity in different brain regions to assess how connected they are. The infants were scanned while sleeping and tightly swaddled. "Getting fMRI data from newborns is a new frontier in neuroimaging," says neuroscientist and lead study author Frederik Kamps, now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "You need participants' head to be still, and a sleeping baby is one that's willing to lie still."
The researchers found that the face regions were highly connected to one another but not to the scene regions, and vice versa, at this young age. It would be months before they became selective for faces or scenes, suggesting connectivity precedes the development of function. The team also assessed connections between these regions and the part of the brain where visual input first arrives from the retina: the primary visual cortex, or V1. This region is structured so that such inputs from the center of the retina arrive at a different area than those from the periphery of the field of vision, forming a map of the visual world. The face network was strongly connected to V1's central area, while the scene network was more tightly linked to its peripheral area. This arrangement likely relates to the fact that we usually fixate on faces, whereas scenes extend across our entire visual field. These networks, present in an infant's earliest days, are therefore connected so as to receive the most appropriate input for the function they will eventually perform. Psychologist Daniel Dilks of Emory University has an eye on possible clinical applications. "He is particularly interested in two neurodevelopmental disorders that are thought to involve differences in brain wiring: People with autism have social impairments that may relate to face processing. And a condition called Williams syndrome causes problems with navigation," reports Scientific American.
"Siblings of children with autism could be studied to ask whether connectivity in face regions might predict the onset of the condition, which is usually not diagnosed until at least two years of age. Dilks also hopes to study babies with Williams syndrome to ask whether connectivity between scene-processing regions is a problem. "
The researchers found that the face regions were highly connected to one another but not to the scene regions, and vice versa, at this young age. It would be months before they became selective for faces or scenes, suggesting connectivity precedes the development of function. The team also assessed connections between these regions and the part of the brain where visual input first arrives from the retina: the primary visual cortex, or V1. This region is structured so that such inputs from the center of the retina arrive at a different area than those from the periphery of the field of vision, forming a map of the visual world. The face network was strongly connected to V1's central area, while the scene network was more tightly linked to its peripheral area. This arrangement likely relates to the fact that we usually fixate on faces, whereas scenes extend across our entire visual field. These networks, present in an infant's earliest days, are therefore connected so as to receive the most appropriate input for the function they will eventually perform. Psychologist Daniel Dilks of Emory University has an eye on possible clinical applications. "He is particularly interested in two neurodevelopmental disorders that are thought to involve differences in brain wiring: People with autism have social impairments that may relate to face processing. And a condition called Williams syndrome causes problems with navigation," reports Scientific American.
"Siblings of children with autism could be studied to ask whether connectivity in face regions might predict the onset of the condition, which is usually not diagnosed until at least two years of age. Dilks also hopes to study babies with Williams syndrome to ask whether connectivity between scene-processing regions is a problem. "
PREwired? (Score:1)
And... (Score:1)
...Designed.
Re:And... (Score:4, Informative)
Understanding even the simplest of such networks is currently beyond our grasp. Eve Marder, a neuroscientist at Brandeis University, has spent much of her career trying to understand how a few dozen neurons in the lobster’s stomach produce a rhythmic grinding. Despite vast amounts of effort and ingenuity, we still cannot predict the effect of changing one component in this tiny network that is not even a simple brain.
The Guardian [theguardian.com]
Re: (Score:2)
I am home. Where are you going?
Nowhere.
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For example in this case, wired for facial recognition or wired in constructing beliefs, the belief that the image being presented is of importance and should be reacted to. So wired to recognise or wired to believe in recognition or anything else of a human social construct. Reason takes far more time and effort than a locked in belief, genetically locked in belief, not the belief itself but the genetic ability to lock it in place in the mind, taking much greater effort to change than to keep in place. For
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Hey kid [youtube.com]
Duh (Score:3, Insightful)
It's like there is something to this evolution stuff
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word is... eyes & ears also develop too... freaky!
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FTFY.
Apparently you haven't noticed the replication crisis yet.
News at 6! (Score:4, Funny)
Babies are prewired to be humans and to do human things and even GASP!!! ACT HUMAN! Word is that men and women together are in on the conspiracy... ever notice how these creatures come about when they get together for a bit of time? You can usually predict the arrival of one of these things by observing the female closely... but not too close... best not to raise any suspicion that you know anything!
Stay safe friends... the babies are going to replace you! So watch your backs!
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The interesting thing here is that they now have some evidence of this and are a little closer to understanding how it works because they managed to MRI a baby's brain.
While it may have been "obvious" we still don't know how it works, but this brings us a little more knowledge.
Breast Recognition Circuit (Score:2)
That's the important one. Let's study that.
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Newborn babies have no breast recognition circuit. They will suck on anything.
They do seem to have face recognition prewired. Both of my kids would stare into my eyes even on the day they were born.
Baby pre-wiring (Score:2)
Humans are animals too (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Small correction:
Some humans are animals too.
We should call this Instincts! (Score:2)
How does a baby bird know how to be fed? Same as this (seriously, having a parent vomit into your beak?).
How does a newborn cow know how to be fed? Same as this.(not as nasty as birds given humans drink this as well, but humans don't generally interact with the udder).
Humans are just wired to have much more freedom (intelligence) after day 1. And it takes humans 12+ years to become independent from parents. Much shorter for most all other species (months for birds, maybe a year for cattle, depends on the
Except for those in right-wing families (Score:2)
Who are programmed to ignore the real world.