Orientation Discrimination and Cortical Function in the Human Newborn
Orientation Discrimination and Cortical Function in the Human Newborn
复制标题
人类新生儿的方向辨别和皮质功能
作者：
A. Slater;V. Morison;Marcia Somers
There is some controversy concerning whether or not the visual abilities of the newborn are mediated entirely through subcortical pathways or whether the visual cortex is functioning at birth. A critical test of cortical functioning is discrimination of orientation: orientation-selective neurons are found in the visual cortex but not in subcortical parts of the visual system. An experiment is described in which newborn infants were habituated to a square-wave grating oriented 45° from vertical. After habituation, significant preferences for the novel, mirror-image, grating were found, a result which argues for some degree of visual cortical functioning at birth.
