Research surrounding facial processing skills continues to pose questions for the field of developmental neuroscience: what regions are responsible for this development? What are the clinical applications of these findings? And recently, in Simon Makin’s article, published in Scientific American, the question of whether or not the ability to recognize and process faces is an innate skill or one that only stems from specific development. Facial processing research in infants helps us to better understand not only when these skills develop, but where and how as well. Dr. Maggie Guy has also contributed findings to the field in her research titled “Face-sensitive brain responses in the first year of life” by giving us a better understanding of where this development occurs in infants.
In Dr. Guy’s research, she and her colleagues were looking at the development of brain areas responsible for face processing during infancy. Using ERPs, they were able to observe heightened activity in five dominant brain areas of the infants studied: anterior temporal lobe, parietal lobe, occipital lobe, posterior cingulate, and the parahippocampal gyrus (Conte et. al.). These findings help to concentrate where this activity is formed during development, relating to the questions that Makin was looking to answer from his article. Is development of facial recognition an innate skill?
In Makin’s article “Born Ready: Babies Are Prewired to Perceive the World,” a study done by researchers at Emory University gives readers an outline of what babies are born with and what skills are experience dependent. This study used resting state fMRIs on 30 sleeping infants (ranging from 6 days old to 57 days old) and found that face processing regions were highly connected to each other but not to regions of the brain that would recognize scenes and environments (Makin). This finding shows that the connectivity precedes the function of the brain regions and that it would take months for these babies to become selective for faces in environments. Many researchers dispute the idea that this function is innate, but that the connectivities in the brain regions and to visual maps are something humans are born with. This means that humans are given the foundation for these skills to develop and how well they do is a product of stimulation from the environment.
Dr. Guy has been able to apply findings about these skills toward research including infants with autism, a direction that the researchers in Makin’s article look to study as well. In addition to this, findings from both of these articles can be used for future clinical research such as the phenomenon of prosopagnosia (inability to recognize a familiar person’s face). Research about development of facial recognition in infants and toddlers is a field of research that can continue to lead breakthroughs and understandings beyond the field of development.
References:
Makin, S. (2020, March 2). Born Ready: Babies Are Prewired to Perceive the World. Scientific
American.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/born-ready-babies-are-prewired-to-
Conte, S., Richards, J. E., Guy, M. W., Xie, W., & Roberts, J. E. (2020). Face-sensitive brain
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