Biology subjects

Skeide, M. A.

Publications and source records attributed to Skeide, M. A..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2024

Electrophysiological decoding captures the temporal trajectory of face categorization in infants

The adult human brain rapidly distinguishes between faces at around 170 milliseconds after stimulus onset. In the developing brain, however, the time course of face discrimination is poorly understood. To shed light on this issue, we presented human and nonhuman primate faces to five to thirteen-month-old infants in an event-related electroencephalography experiment. Using time-resolved decoding based on logistic regression we detected above-chance discrimination of human faces from nonhuman faces in a time window starting at around 200 milliseconds, originating from occipito-temporal electrodes. There was no evidence, however, for above-chance discrimination of individual human or individual nonhuman faces. Moreover, using neural network-based decoding, we delivered the proof of principle that face categorization but not individuation can be detected even at the level of single participants. These results indicate that rapid face categorization emerges already in preverbal infants.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2024

Population connective field modeling reveals retinotopic visual cortex organization in the prenatal human brain

The visual space is sampled by cortical field maps in which nearby neuronal populations encode nearby locations of images received from the retina. Whether retinotopic cortical organization already emerges in the neonatal or even prenatal human brain is currently unknown. To answer this question in vivo, we applied population connective field modeling to 871 resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging datasets ranging from prenatal to young adult age. We found topographically organized eccentricity and polar angle connectivity maps in V2 and V3 of the visual cortex as early as the 21st week of gestation. These results highlight that human proto-retinotopic cortical maps develop in the second trimester of pregnancy, predating visual experience.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2021

A Meta-Analysis of fMRI Studies of Semantic Cognition in Children

Our capacity to derive meaning from things that we see and words that we hear is unparalleled in other animal species and current AI systems. Despite a wealth of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies on where different semantic features are processed in the adult brain, the development of these systems in children is poorly understood. Here we conducted an extensive database search and identified 50 fMRI experiments investigating semantic world knowledge, semantic relatedness judgments, and the differentiation of visual semantic object categories in children (total N = 1,018, mean age = 10.1 years, range 4-15 years). Synthesizing the results of these experiments, we found consistent activation in the bilateral inferior frontal gyri (IFG), fusiform gyri (FG), and supplementary motor areas (SMA), as well as in the left middle and superior temporal gyri (MTG/STG). Within this system, we found little evidence for age-related changes across childhood and high overlap with the adult semantic system. In sum, the identification of these cortical areas provides the starting point for further research on the mechanisms by which the developing brain learns to make sense of its environment.

neuroscience↗