A paper published on November 15 in Current Biology suggests that a patch (小块) of cells developed for identifying human faces, the fusiform face area (FFA), is up and running in infants (婴儿) as young as two months old.
Rebecca Saxe, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and her colleagues scanned 42 infants ranging in age from two to nine months using a special functional magnetic resonance (磁共振) imaging (fMRI) helmet designed specifically for babies. Data from 16 of the infants had to be thrown out because it is extremely difficult to keep them happy, still and awake for long. For the 26 remaining infants, the scientists compared activity in visual areas of the brain while they watched 2. 7-second video clips that described faces, body parts, landscapes, and other objects. Results showed more activity in the areas of the brain's visual system that are specialized for recognizing faces, bodies and scenes than areas for other observed objects.
"There's every reason to think that babies are born expecting and looking for their most important social partners, " Saxe says. "Something in their brain makes them interested in faces actually before they've had any experience with faces at all. Babies look toward face-like images from hours after birth. "
Other researchers are not convinced by Saxe's conclusions/41 don't believe that there are face patches present at birth, " Livingstone says. He views experience and learning are essential for the development of the FFA.
To Kalanit Grill-Spector, a psychology professor at Stanford University, the most exciting part of the new paper is not about this question of learned versus inborn development. "I think the study is kind of attempting to address this question, but it doesn't really provide a perfect answer one way or another. What impressed me is the amount of babies that they've scanned and with a lot of new innovations in baby fMRI, " she says. "That's going to push the field forward. "