Cortical activation to object shape and speed of motion during the first year.

article i nfo Article history: Accepted 30 April 2014 Available online 10 May 2014 Agreatdealisknownaboutthefunctionalorganizationofcorticalnetworksthatmediatevisualobjectprocessing in the adult. The current research is part of a growing effort to identify the functional maturation of these path- ways in the developing brain. The current research used near-infrared spectroscopy to investigate functional ac- tivation of the infant cortex during the processing of featural information (shape) and spatiotemporal information (speed of motion) during the first year of life. Our investigation focused on two areas that were im- plicated in previous studies: anterior temporal cortex and posterior parietal cortex. Neuroimaging data were col- lected with 207 infants across three age groups: 3- 6m onths (Experiment 1), 7- 8m onths (Experiment 2), and 10-12 months (Experiments 3 and 4). The neuroimaging data revealed age-related changes in patterns of acti- vation to shape and speed information, mostly involving posterior parietal areas, some of which were predicted and others that were not. We suggest that these changes reflect age-related differences in the perceptual and/or cognitive processes engaged during the task.