I am very excited to be presenting our work using awake infant fMRI and developmentally inspired deep neural networks to better understand the visual features that the developing brain encodes infants view objects at #CNS2026 in Vancouver this week!
Of course! The dataset, including our stimuli, is openly available. You can find it here: openneuro.org/datasets/ds0...
Human babies may be able to visually categorize different objects earlier than previously thought, even at two months of age, according to research published in Nature Neuroscience. The results challenge our understanding of visual development in infancy:
#Neuroscience #Neuroskyence 🧠
My paper with @mikearcaro.bsky.social exploring the organization of the visual system in newborn infants is now out in @cp-neuron.bsky.social !
The Transmitter writes about @clionaod.bsky.social's work with
@ainedineen.bsky.social, @annatruzzi.bsky.social, Graham King, @lorinanaci.bsky.social, Keelin Harrison, Enna-Louise D'Arcy, Jessica White, @chiarac.bsky.social, Tamrin Holloway, Anna Kravchenko, @diedrichsenjorn.bsky.social!
6/7 Our results further highlight the first year of life as a time of intricate brain function. Infants possess the foundations of visual cognition to group the world from very early on. Read more in Nature Neuroscience! 📖🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41....
5/7 Not all visual regions mature early. 🚧 We found that LO, a key object-selective region in adults, is much later to show reliable visual representations. This suggests non-hierarchical development: category structure appears in the ventrotemporal cortex prior to the lateral occipital cortex.
We didn't look at faces vs. other categories. But previous work (www.cell.com/current-biol... and elifesciences.org/articles/100... for example) has shown this is present from an early age. In another of our tasks not presented in this article, we find similar patterns for faces using videos.
7/7 Funded by @erc.europa.eu&@researchireland.ie. Thank you to the families, the Coombe & Rotunda hospitals, and the team: @rhodricusack.bsky.social, @ainedineen.bsky.social,Anna Truzzi,Graham King @lorijn.bsky.social,@chiarac.bsky.social,@ennadarcy.bsky.social,@diedrichsenjorn.bsky.social +more!
Awake infant fMRI offers a rare window into early brain and cognitive development. In a new paper out now in Infancy, we leverage data from hundreds of infant scans from the Saxe and Turk-Browne Labs to reveal what factors drive scanning success — and how future studies can maximize data retention!
Using infant fMRI, the authors show that, by 2 months of age, representations in high-level visual cortex encode visual categories that align with deep neural networks, and lateral object-selective regions are later to develop.
Brain activity patterns in the ventral visual cortex appear to distinguish images across 12 categories, including birds and trees, fMRI scans suggest.
www.thetransmitter.org
Using infant fMRI, the authors show that, by 2 months of age, representations in high-level visual cortex encode visual categories that align with deep neural networks, and lateral object-selective re...
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in awake infants has the potential to reveal how the early developing brain gives rise to cognition and behavior. However, awake infant fMRI poses signifi....
Ayzenberg and Arcaro characterize the functional organization of the human visual system at birth and across the last trimester of gestation. They find that the neonate visual system can already be segregated into three hierarchically organized visual pathways: ventral, lateral, and dorsal. They also find developmental differences between pathways, with the dorsal visual pathway being more mature than the others.
