Neural correlates of maturation of face processing

面孔感知对社交和发展至关重要，它会经历一个长期的成熟过程，一直持续到十几岁。然而，对于支持儿童面孔感知的神经或心理过程的成熟程度，我们知之甚少。在国家科学基金会的支持下，斯坦福大学的Kalanit Grill-Spector博士和她的同事们将开展一项研究计划，使用尖端的神经成像工具(高分辨率功能磁共振成像或fMRI)和行为方法，从涉及的心理过程、潜在神经系统的发展及其之间的关系来阐明学龄儿童脸部加工的成熟。对成年参与者进行的成像研究揭示了人类视觉皮质中的面部选择性区域，其活动与受试者在面部感知任务中的表现相关。这些发现支持脸部选择性皮质在成人脸部知觉中的关键作用。目前的项目将研究面孔知觉的成熟是否具体涉及面孔选择性皮质的成熟，还是一般的视觉皮质的成熟。行为测量将与功能磁共振相结合，以调查视觉和面部选择性皮质的成熟如何影响面部处理的特定阶段。例如，这些研究将考察儿童在基本视觉任务上的表现是否与成人不同，如对图像进行分类(人脸、汽车等)，儿童在识别特定个人方面的表现是否较低，以及儿童与成人的面部是否存在差异。这项研究很重要，因为它将为理解儿童视觉感知发展的基本神经机制提供亟需的基础。了解正常成熟对于了解许多学习障碍也是至关重要的，这些学习障碍涉及视觉感知缺陷和发育障碍，包括视觉感知改变(如威廉姆斯综合征和自闭症)。

Face perception is critical for social interaction and development, and it undergoes a prolonged maturation that last until the teens. However, little is known about the maturation of the neural or psychological processes that support face perception in children. With support from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Kalanit Grill-spector and her colleagues at Stanford University will conduct a program of research that will use cutting-edge neuroimaging tools (high resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRI) and behavioral methods to elucidate the maturation of face processing in school age children in terms of the psychological processes involved, the development of the underlying neural systems, and their relation. Imaging studies conducted with adult participants have revealed face-selective regions in the human visual cortex whose activity is correlated with subjects' performance in face perception tasks. These findings support a key role for face-selective cortex in face perception in adults. The current project will examine whether the maturation of face perception involves maturation of face-selective cortex specifically, or visual cortex generally. Behavioral measures will be combined with fMRI to investigate how the maturation of visual and face-selective cortex affects specific stages of face processing. For example, the studies will examine whether children's performance is different than adults on basic visual tasks such as classifying images (face, car, etc.), whether children's performance is lower for identifying specific individuals and whether performance differs for faces of children vs. faces of adults. This research is important because it will provide a much needed foundation for understanding the basic neural mechanisms of the development of visual perception in children. Understanding normal maturation is also crucial for understanding many learning disabilities that involve deficits in visual perception and developmental disorders that include altered visual perception (such as Williams Syndrome and autism).