The normal development of inferotemporal cortex

 描述(申请人提供)：拟议研究的目标是研究幼年猕猴下颞叶皮质的正常发育，并将正常饲养的动物与早期视觉体验发生重大变化的动物进行比较。在成年人类和猴子中，颞叶的离散区域专门用于处理特定的对象类别，如脸、文本、身体或地点。目前还不清楚这种专门化是如何出现的，也不知道拥有这样专门化领域的功能意义是什么。为了确定和绘制下颞叶皮质最早的组织原理，将使用功能磁共振对幼猴进行扫描，从出生开始，然后在发育过程中重复扫描。我们的实验室已经开发出扫描警觉的幼猴的技术，这些技术完全是非侵入性的，对猴子没有伤害；我们已经成功地扫描了足够年轻的动物，以至于整个皮质视觉通路仍然不成熟。发现组织的哪些方面是与生俱来的，哪些是由经验驱动的，这将是至关重要的。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of the proposed research is to study the normal development of inferotemporal cortex in infant macaques and to compare normally reared animals to animals who have had drastically altered early visual experience. In adult humans and monkeys discrete regions of the temporal lobe are specialized for processing particular object categories, such as faces, text, bodies, or places. It is unknown how this specialization emerges, and it is not known what the functional significance is of having such specialized domains. To determine and map the earliest organizing principles of inferotemporal cortex, infant monkeys will be scanned, starting at birth, then repeatedly during development, using functional MRI. Our laboratory has developed techniques for scanning alert infant monkeys that are entirely non-invasive, and not harmful to the monkeys; we have demonstrated success in scanning animals young enough that the entire cortical visual pathway is still immature. It will be of fundamental importance to discover what kind aspects of the organization are innate and which are driven by experience.