Biomedical subjects

Mark H Johnson

Publications and source records attributed to Mark H Johnson.

34 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

PubMed2005

Subcortical face processing.

Recent functional imaging, neuropsychological and electrophysiological studies on adults have provided evidence for a fast, low-spatial-frequency, subcortical face-detection pathway that modulates the responses of certain cortical areas to faces and other social stimuli. These findings shed light on an older literature on the face-detection abilities of newborn infants, and the hypothesis that these newborn looking preferences are generated by a subcortical route. Converging lines of evidence indicate that the subcortical face route provides a developmental foundation for what later becomes the adult cortical 'social brain' network, and that disturbances to this pathway might contribute to certain developmental disorders.

Brain↗

PubMed2004

Eye gaze cueing facilitates neural processing of objects in 4-month-old infants.

A major issue in developmental science is how infants use the direction of other's eye gaze to facilitate the processing of information. Four-month-old infants passively viewed images of an adult face gazing toward or away from objects. When presented with the objects a second time, infants showed differences in a slow wave event-related potential, indicating that uncued objects were perceived as less familiar than objects previously cued by the direction of gaze of another person. This result shows that the direction of eye gaze of another cannot only bias infant attention, but also lead to enhanced information processing of the objects concerned.

Attention↗

PubMed2004

Maternal personality and infants' neural and visual responsivity to facial expressions of emotion.

BACKGROUND: Recent investigations suggest that experience plays an important role in the development of face processing. The aim of this study was to investigate the potential role of experience in the development of the ability to process facial expressions of emotion. METHOD: We examined the potential role of experience indirectly by investigating the relationship between the emotional environment provided by mothers (as indexed by affective measures of their personality) and 7-month-olds' processing of emotional expressions (as indexed by visual attention and event-related potentials [ERPs]). RESULTS: For positive emotion, infants with highly positive mothers looked longer at fearful than happy expressions, and a subset of these infants who themselves also scored highly on positive temperament showed a larger negative central (Nc) component in the ERP to fearful than happy faces. For negative emotion, there were no detectable influences of maternal personality, although very fearful infants showed a larger Nc to fearful than happy expressions over the right hemisphere. CONCLUSION: To the extent that these variations in maternal disposition reflect variations in their expression of positive facial expressions, these results suggest that the emotional environment experienced by infants contributes to the development of their responses to facial expressions.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Face-sensitive cortical processing in early infancy.

BACKGROUND: Debates about the developmental origins of adult face processing could be directly addressed if a clear infant neural marker could be identified. Previous research with infants remains open to criticism regarding the control stimuli employed. METHODS: We recorded ERPs from adults and 3-month-old infants while they watched faces and matched visual noise stimuli. RESULTS: We observed similar amplitude enhancement for faces in the infant N290 and adult N170. In contrast, the infant P400 showed only a latency effect, making it unlikely to be the main precursor of the adult N170. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that there is some degree of specificity of cortical processing of faces as early as 3 months of age.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Mechanisms of eye gaze perception during infancy.

Previous work has shown that infants are sensitive to the direction of gaze of another's face, and that gaze direction can cue attention. The present study replicates and extends results on the ERP correlates of gaze processing in 4-month-olds. In two experiments, we recorded ERPs while 4-month-olds viewed direct and averted gaze within the context of averted and inverted heads. Our results support the previous finding that cortical processing of faces in infants is enhanced when accompanied by direct gaze. However, this effect is only found when eyes are presented within the context of an upright face.

Analysis of Variance↗

PubMed2003

Development of human brain functions.

Aspects of postnatal human brain development are reviewed. The development of brain function has commonly been characterized in terms of the unfolding of a maturational sequence. In contrast, we argue that postnatal functional brain development occurs through a dynamic process of emerging patterns of interactions between different brain regions. Some of these processes may also be characteristic of perceptual and motor skill learning in adults. Possible implications of these views for our understanding of developmental disorders are raised.

Brain↗

PubMed2003

Representing occluded objects in the human infant brain.

One of the most striking phenomena in cognitive development has been the apparent failure of infants to show 'object permanence' in manual reaching tasks although they show evidence for representing hidden objects in studies measuring looking times. We report a neural correlate of object permanence in six-month-old infants: a burst of gamma-band EEG activity over the temporal lobe that occurs during an occlusion event and when an object is expected to appear from behind an occluder. We interpret this burst as being related to the infants' mental representation of the occluded object.

Analysis of Variance↗

PubMed2003

ERP abnormalities of illusory contour perception in Williams syndrome.

Williams syndrome is a genetic disorder in which visuo-spatial performance is poor. Theorists have claimed that the deficit lies in high-level processing, leaving low-level visual processes intact. We investigated this claim by examining an aspect of low-level processing, perceptual completion, i.e. the ability of this clinical group to perceive illusory Kanizsa squares. We then used event-related potentials to examine neural correlates of perceptual completion. While participants were able to perceive illusory contours, the neural correlates of this apparently normal perception were different from controls. Such differences in low-level visual processes may significantly impact on the development of higher-level visual processes. We conclude that, contrary to earlier claims, there is atypical neural processing during low-level visual perception in Williams syndrome.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2003

The "what" and "where" of object representations in infancy.

Four-month-olds' memory for surface feature and location information was tested following brief occlusions. When the target objects were images of female faces or monochromatic asterisks infants showed increased looking times following a change in identity or color but not following a change in location or combinations of feature and location information. When the target objects were images of manipulable toys, the infants showed increased looking times following a change in location but not identity or the binding of location and identity information. This evidence is consistent with the idea that young infants are unable to maintain the information processed separately in both the dorsal and ventral visual streams during occlusions. Our results suggest that it is the target's affordance for action that determines whether the dorsal or ventral information is selectively maintained during occlusion.

Child Development↗

PubMed2003

Infants perceiving and acting on the eyes: tests of an evolutionary hypothesis.

It has been hypothesized that an evolutionarily ancient mechanism underlies the ability of human infants to detect and act upon the direction of eye gaze of another human face. However, the evidence from behavioral studies with infants is also consistent with a more domain-general system responsive to the lateral motion of stimuli regardless of whether or not eyes are involved. To address this issue three experiments with 4-month-old infants are reported that utilize a standard face-cueing paradigm. In the first experiment an inverted face was used to investigate whether the motion of the pupils elicits the cueing effect regardless of the surrounding face context. In the second experiment pupil motion and eye gaze direction were opposed, allowing us to assess their relative importance. In a third experiment, a more complex gaze shift sequence allowed us to analyse the importance of beginning with a period of mutual gaze. Overall, the results were consistent with the importance of the perceived direction of motion of pupils. However, to be effective in cueing spatial locations this motion needs to be preceded by a period of direct mutual gaze (eye contact). We suggest that evolution results in information-processing biases that shape and constrain the outcome of individual development to eventually result in adult adaptive specializations.

Biological Evolution↗

PubMed2003

Spatial representation and attention in toddlers with Williams syndrome and Down syndrome.

The nature of the spatial representations that underlie simple visually guided actions early in life was investigated in toddlers with Williams syndrome (WS), Down syndrome (DS), and healthy chronological age- and mental age-matched controls, through the use of a "double-step" saccade paradigm. The experiment tested the hypothesis that, compared to typically developing infants and toddlers, and toddlers with DS, those with WS display a deficit in using spatial representations to guide actions. Levels of sustained attention were also measured within these groups, to establish whether differences in levels of engagement influenced performance on the double-step saccade task. The results showed that toddlers with WS were unable to combine extra-retinal information with retinal information to the same extent as the other groups, and displayed evidence of other deficits in saccade planning, suggesting a greater reliance on sub-cortical mechanisms than the other populations. Results also indicated that their exploration of the visual environment is less developed. The sustained attention task revealed shorter and fewer periods of sustained attention in toddlers with DS, but not those with WS, suggesting that WS performance on the double-step saccade task is not explained by poorer engagement. The findings are also discussed in relation to a possible attention disengagement deficit in WS toddlers. Our study highlights the importance of studying genetic disorders early in development.

Attention↗

PubMed2003

Development of face-sensitive event-related potentials during infancy: a review.

Event-related potential (ERP) studies in adults have identified a number of components related to encoding and recognition memory of faces. Although behavioural studies indicate that even very young infants are able to detect faces and recognise familiar individuals, very few ERP studies document the neural correlates of these early abilities. In this article, we review four components (P1, N290, P400, Nc) and slow wave activity that are elicited while infants view faces. Where possible we draw links between these components and their possible equivalents to those observed in children and adults, and we highlight areas where further investigation is required. The theoretical importance of ERP studies of face processing in infants for debates about the origins and domain specificity of the adult cortical face processing system are discussed.

Child, Preschool↗

PubMed2002

Eye contact detection in humans from birth.

Making eye contact is the most powerful mode of establishing a communicative link between humans. During their first year of life, infants learn rapidly that the looking behaviors of others conveys significant information. Two experiments were carried out to demonstrate special sensitivity to direct eye contact from birth. The first experiment tested the ability of 2- to 5-day-old newborns to discriminate between direct and averted gaze. In the second experiment, we measured 4-month-old infants' brain electric activity to assess neural processing of faces when accompanied by direct (as opposed to averted) eye gaze. The results show that, from birth, human infants prefer to look at faces that engage them in mutual gaze and that, from an early age, healthy babies show enhanced neural processing of direct gaze. The exceptionally early sensitivity to mutual gaze demonstrated in these studies is arguably the major foundation for the later development of social skills.

Child Development↗

PubMed2002

Specialization of neural mechanisms underlying face recognition in human infants.

Newborn infants respond preferentially to simple face-like patterns, raising the possibility that the face-specific regions identified in the adult cortex are functioning from birth. We sought to evaluate this hypothesis by characterizing the specificity of infants' electrocortical responses to faces in two ways: (1) comparing responses to faces of humans with those to faces of nonhuman primates; and 2) comparing responses to upright and inverted faces. Adults' face-responsive N170 event-related potential (ERP) component showed specificity to upright human faces that was not observable at any point in the ERPs of infants. A putative "infant N170" did show sensitivity to the species of the face, but the orientation of the face did not influence processing until a later stage. These findings suggest a process of gradual specialization of cortical face processing systems during postnatal development.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Neuroimaging of typical and atypical development: a perspective from multiple levels of analysis.

To date, research involving functional neuroimaging of typical and atypical development has depended on several assumptions about the postnatal maturation of the brain. We consider evidence from multiple levels of analysis that brings into question these underlying assumptions and advance an alternative view. This alternative view, based on an "interactive specialization" approach to postnatal brain development, indicates that there is a need to: obtain data from early in development; focus more on differences in interregional interactions rather than searching for localized, discrete lesions; examine the temporal dynamics of neural processing; and move away from deficits to image tasks in which atypical participants perform as well as typically developing participants.

Brain↗

PubMed2002

Developing a brain specialized for face perception: a converging methods approach.

Adults are normally very quick and accurate at recognizing facial identity. This skill has been explained by two opposing views as being due to the existence of an innate cortical "face module" or to the natural consequence of adults' extensive experience with faces. Neither of these views puts particular importance on studying development of face-processing skills, as in one view the module simply comes on-line and in the other view development is equated with adult learning. In this article, we present evidence from a variety of methodologies to argue for an "interactive specialization" view. In this view, orienting tendencies present early in life ensure faces are a frequent visual input to higher cortical areas in the ventral visual pathway. In this way, cortical specialization for face processing is an emergent product of the interaction of factors both intrinsic and extrinsic to the developing child.

Adult↗