Neural Mechanisms of Early Memory Development

University Of Minnesota Twin Cities, Minneapolis MN

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Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The aim of the current proposal is to extend previous work conducted by the P.I on the ontogeny of memory to include memory for social stimuli, specifically, faces. Work in cognitive neuroscience has increasingly pointed to structures in the medial temporal lobe (e.g., the fusiform gyrus) as playing a prominent role in face recognition. Unfortunately, considerable work remains to be done to examine when in development these function/structure relations emerge. In the current proposal a series of studies will be conducted that will involve the recording of high-density (64 channel) event-related potentials (ERPs). Study 1 will examine infants' recognition of familiar faces (e.g., mother, father, sibling) and objects. To examine how much experience is necessary to facilitate recognition, Study 2 will evaluate infants' recognition of faces and objects to which they have received extensive exposure in the home vs. laboratory. To determine if infants' recognition of the mother's face is due to the affective significance of this face vs. simple familiarity, Study 3 will examine Infants' recognition of objects to which they have an emotional attachment. Studies 4 and 5 will extend the previous studies to evaluate whether face recognition represents an expert system or whether there is, in fact, something "special" about faces. Thus, in Study 4 subjects will be asked to recognize monkey faces, whereas In Study 5 they will be asked to recognize an artificial class of stimuli called "Greebles." Across all 5 studies, detailed spatio-temporal maps will be used to examine the neural architecture involved in face and object recognition. The overall premise upon which this proposal is based is that experience with faces recruits regions within the inferior temporal cortex, leading to cortical specialization.