Trends in Cognitive Sciences
Volume 11, Issue 9, September 2007, Pages 367-369
Journal home page for Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Update
Research Focus
Developing a cortex specialized for face perception

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2007.06.007Get rights and content

Recent developmental functional magnetic resonance imaging studies provide evidence that the cortical specialization for face perception observed in adults emerges only gradually over the first decade of childhood. These developmental results provide a middle-ground view on the long-standing debate in the literature from adults about the specificity or otherwise of face-sensitive areas of cortex. According to this developmental perspective, certain cortical regions become specialized for face perception in adults, partly as a result of a decade or more of experience and partly as a result of initial biases.

Introduction

Faces are vital for human interaction. It is not surprising, therefore, that face processing in the human adult brain involves several cortical areas, such as the fusiform gyrus, the superior temporal sulcus and other parts of the occipito-temporal cortex [1]. Two very recent studies systematically investigated the development of specificity of the cortical activations resulting from face perception in children and showed that, although regions of cortex are activated for faces, these regions do not become specifically tuned to faces until surprisingly late in development. These new imaging data support behavioural evidence that some face-processing skills can be late to develop. For example, although six-year-old children are adult-like in their abilities to process faces in tasks involving processing of individual internal or external features, sensitivity to changes in the spacing of features remains inferior until age ten. Furthermore, children have difficulty ignoring irrelevant information, such as head orientation or external paraphernalia when processing the identity of a face [2].

Section snippets

Developmental imaging studies provide new insights in face processing abilities

In an innovative study, Scherf and colleagues [3] used short-clips of naturalistic movies of faces, objects, buildings and navigation scenes in a passive viewing task with children (5–8 years), adolescents (11–14 years) and adults. Interestingly, they observed that although children at 5–8 years showed patterns of cortical activation similar in magnitude to that seen at older ages, this activation was not selective to faces in the classical adult face processing areas (such as the Fusiform

The interactive specialization approach to functional brain development

It has recently been suggested that data from development could help to resolve the continuing debate in the adult literature [7]. Aside from the obvious question of the importance, or otherwise, of expertise acquired over the first months and years of life, developmental data might offer new insights into the basic mechanisms that determine the adult human pattern of cortical specialization for cognitive and perceptual functions [8]. More specifically, developmental neuroimaging studies on

Conclusions

Recent studies provide an important piece of the jigsaw in our understanding of the development and neural basis of face processing. The developmental perspective on the debate from adult studies (about the specificity or otherwise of face processing areas in cortex) offers an intriguing middle-ground view. That is, the FFA and related areas, such as the superior temporal sulcus, might begin with connection and architectural biases sufficient to ensure that they are activated by the presence of

Acknowledgements

K.C.K. is supported by a Marie Curie Fellowship (MEST-CT-2005–020725) and M.H.J. by the MRC (G-9715587).

References (16)

There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (121)

View all citing articles on Scopus
View full text