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Right STS responses to biological motion in infancy – An fNIRS study using point-light walkers

2020; Elsevier BV; Volume: 149; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107668

1873-3514

Isabel C. Lisboa, Helga O. Miguel, Adriana Sampaio, Sandra Mouta, Jorge A. Santos, Alfredo F. Pereira,

Infant Development and Preterm Care

Biological motion perception—our capacity to perceive the intrinsic motion of humans and animals—has been implicated as a precursor of social development in infancy. In the adult brain, several biological motion neural correlates have been identified; of particular importance, the right posterior superior temporal sulcus (rpSTS). We present a study, conducted with fNIRS, which measured brain activations in infants' right posterior temporal region to point-light walkers, a standard stimulus category of biological motion perception studies. Seven-month-old infants (n = 23) participated in a within-subject blocked design with three experimental conditions and one baseline. Infants viewed: an intact upright point-light walker of a person approaching the observer; the same point-light walker stimulus but inverted; and a selected frame from the point-light walker stimulus, approaching the viewer at constant velocity with no articulated motion, close to object motion. We found activations for both the upright and the inverted point-light walkers. The rigid moving point-light walker frame did not elicit any response consistent with a functional activation in this region. Our results suggest that biological motion is processed differently in the right middle posterior temporal cortex in infancy, and that articulated motion is a critical feature in biological motion processing at this early age.