Developmental Orgins of Human Extrastriate Areas

人类外域的发育起源

• 批准号: 6810344
• 负责人: NANCY KANWISHER
• 金额: $ 22.62万
• 依托单位: MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-09-01 至 2006-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/6810344
• 关键词: adult human (21+); brain imaging /visualization /scanning; children; clinical research; developmental neurobiology; functional magnetic resonance imaging; human subject; longitudinal human study; neural information processing; occipital lobe /cortex; patient oriented research; time resolved data; visual cortex; visual perception

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal is in response to PA-03-107 (NIH EXPLORATORY/DEVELOPMENTAL RESEARCH GRANT AWARD R21). FMRI investigations over the last decade have revealed the functional organization of human visual cortex in considerable detail, including the identification of a number of extrastriate areas, each of which responds quite selectively to a specific kind of visual information: the fusiform face area (FFA) for faces; the parahippocampal place area (PPA) for the spatial structure of scenes, the extrastriate body area (EBA) for bodies and their parts, the lateral occipital complex (LOC) for object shapes, and visual motion area MT. Almost nothing is known about the developmental origins of these extrastriate areas. The experiments described here will first behaviorally test children age 4-adult on a set of visual tasks, each designed to tap the function of a different extrastriate area, then characterize the development of these extrastriate regions directly using fMRI (in children age 7-adult), and finally test the relationship between the developmental changes observed neurally and those observed behaviorally. We will test the hypothesis that cortical specialization increases throughout childhood (as expected if the cortex is fine-tuned through experience), against the competing hypothesis that informational exchange between processing modules increases over development, thereby reducing domain-specific activation patterns in these areas. We will also test specific hypotheses about differences between areas in the time course of developmental change. Finally, we will test relationships between the developmental changes we observe behaviorally vs. neurally with longitudinal studies of individual subjects. Extrastriate cortex is an ideal test case for pediatric fMRI because BOLD signals are very large from this region of the brain, and because complex tasks are not required to activate this region. In addition to advancing the methodology of pediatric fMRI, this work is likely to provide important insights about i) the developmental origins of human extrastriate cortical areas, ii) the behavioral functions that each area subserves, iii) the nature and developmental change in visual shape representations across childhood, and iv) the domain-specificity of high-level vision and its neural substrate.

描述（由申请人提供）：本提案是对PA-03-107（NIH探索性/医学研究资助奖R21）的回应。近十年来的功能磁共振成像研究已经相当详细地揭示了人类视觉皮层的功能组织，包括识别出许多纹外区，每个区都对一种特定的视觉信息有选择性地反应：面孔的梭状面孔区（FFA）;海马旁位置区（PPA）用于场景的空间结构，纹状体外体区（EBA）用于身体及其部分，外侧枕叶复合体（EBA）用于物体形状，和视觉运动区MT。几乎没有人知道这些外纹区的发育起源。这里描述的实验将首先在一组视觉任务上对4岁至成人的儿童进行行为测试，每个任务旨在挖掘不同的纹外区的功能，然后直接使用fMRI（7岁至成人的儿童）描述这些纹外区的发育，最后测试神经观察到的发育变化与行为观察到的发育变化之间的关系。我们将测试的假设，皮质专业化增加整个童年（如预期的，如果皮质是通过经验微调），对竞争的假设，处理模块之间的信息交换增加的发展，从而减少域特定的激活模式在这些领域。我们还将测试特定的假设，在发展变化的时间过程中的区域之间的差异。最后，我们将通过对个体受试者的纵向研究来测试我们观察到的行为与神经的发展变化之间的关系。纹外皮层是儿科功能磁共振成像的理想测试案例，因为BOLD信号从大脑的这一区域非常大，因为激活这一区域不需要复杂的任务。除了推进儿科功能磁共振成像的方法，这项工作很可能提供重要的见解i）人类纹外皮质区的发育起源，ii）每个区域的行为功能，iii）整个儿童期视觉形状表征的性质和发育变化，以及iv）高级视觉及其神经基质的域特异性。