Visual cortical activity before and after cochlear implantation: A follow up ERP prospective study in deaf children.

ERPs were recorded in response to presentation of static colored patterned stimuli in 25 children (19 to 80months of age at cochlear implantation, CI) with very early prelingual profound deafness (PreLD), 21 postlingual profoundly deaf children (PostLD) (34 to 180months of age at CI) and gender- and age-matched control hearing children. Recording sessions were performed before CI, then 6 and 24months after CI. Results showed that prelingual and, at a lesser degree, postlingual auditory deprivation altered cortical visual neural activity associated to colored shapes from both P1 and N1 cortical processing stages.

Visual and auditory socio-cognitive perception in unilateral temporal lobe epilepsy in children and adolescents: a prospective controlled study.

Aim: A high rate of abnormal social behavioural traits or perceptual deficits is observed in children with unilateral temporal lobe epilepsy. In the present study, perception of auditory and visual social signals, carried by faces and voices, was evaluated in children or adolescents with temporal lobe epilepsy.

Methods: We prospectively investigated a sample of 62 children with focal non-idiopathic epilepsy early in the course of the disorder.

Narrowing perceptual sensitivity to the native language in infancy: exogenous influences on developmental timing.

The infancy literature situates the perceptual narrowing of speech sounds at around 10 months of age, but little is known about the mechanisms that influence individual differences in this developmental milestone. We hypothesized that such differences might in part be explained by characteristics of mother-child interaction. Infant sensitivity to syllables from their native tongue was compared longitudinally to sensitivity to non-native phonemes, at 6 months and again at 10 months.

Words and syllables in fluent speech segmentation by French-learning infants: an ERP study.

In order to acquire their native language, infants must learn to identify and segment word forms in continuous speech. This word segmentation ability is thus crucial for language acquisition. Previous behavioral studies have shown that it emerges during the first year of life, and that early segmentation differs according to the language in acquisition.

Effect of partial occlusion on newborns' face preference and recognition.

Many studies have shown that newborns prefer (e.g. Goren, Sarty & Wu, 1975; Valenza, Simion, Macchi Cassia & Umiltà, 1996) and recognize (e.

Nonidiopathic focal epilepsies: methodological problems for a comprehensive neuropsychological evaluation.

In aiming to define better practice parameters for neuropsychological assessment in patients with nonidiopathic partial epilepsies, particularly in children, we discuss the reasons for the current lack of clear answers. The relevant factors include the epilepsy itself, the complexity of the issues related to cognitive function/dysfunction and the underlying developmental processes. Another factor is the lack of availability and high cost of neuropsychological testing, even in industrialized societies.

Cerebral plasticity in crossed C7 grafts of the brachial plexus: an fMRI study.

In order to rescue elbow flexion after complete accidental avulsion of one brachial plexus, seven patients underwent a neurotization of the biceps with fibers from the contralateral C7 root. The C7 fibers used for the graft belonged to the pyramidal pathway, which descends from the cerebral hemisphere ipsilateral to the damaged plexus, and which controls extension and abduction of the contralateral arm. After several months of reeducation, a functional magentic resonance imaging study was performed with a 1.

Early brain lesions and face-processing development.

Studies of functional plasticity after pre- or perinatal brain damage can tell us whether the neural substrate normally involved in the development of a given ability is specific and, if so, when it becomes functionally specified and unique. Development of face processing was investigated in 5- to 17-year-old children who had a unilateral brain injury in the pre-, peri-, or postnatal period. In Studies 1 and 2, patients with a posterior injury involving the temporal regions exhibited a face-processing deficit that was independent of their age at test time.

Evidence of the Face Inversion Effect in 4-Month-Old Infants.

This study tested the presence of the face inversion effect in 4-month-old infants using habituation to criterion followed by a novelty preference paradigm. Results of Experiment 1 confirmed previous findings, showing that when 1 single photograph of a face is presented in the habituation phase and when infants are required to recognize the same photograph, no differences in recognition performance with upright and inverted faces are found. However, Experiment 2 showed that, when infants are habituated to a face shown in a variety of poses and are required to recognize a new pose of the same face, infants' recognition performances were higher for upright than for inverted faces.

Recognition of own-race and other-race faces by three-month-old infants.

Background: People are better at recognizing faces of their own race than faces of another race. Such race specificity may be due to differential expertise in the two races.

Method: In order to find out whether this other-race effect develops as early as face-recognition skills or whether it is a long-term effect of acquired expertise, we tested face recognition in 3-month-old Caucasian infants by conducting two experiments using Caucasian and Asiatic faces and a visual pair-comparison task.

Effect of visual experience on face processing: a developmental study of inversion and non-native effects.

In adults, three phenomena are taken to demonstrate an experience effect on face recognition: an inversion effect, a non-native face effect (so-called 'other-race' effect) and their interaction. It is crucial for our understanding of the developmental perception mechanisms of object processing to discover when these effects are present in childhood. Three- to 5-year-old Caucasian children (N = 64) were asked to recognize upright and inverted Caucasian and Asian faces.

Developmental changes in the processing of hierarchical shapes continue into adolescence.

The present study was designed to trace the normal development of local and global processing of hierarchical visual forms. We presented pairs of hierarchical shapes to children and adults and asked them to indicate whether the two shapes were the same or different at either the global or the local level. In Experiments 1 (6-year-olds, 10-year-olds, adults) and 2 (10-year-olds, 14-year-olds, adults), we presented stimuli centrally.

Picture naming in young children: a developmental study on interhemispheric collaboration.

The aim of the present study was to determine how interhemispheric collaboration and visual attention in basic lexical tasks develop during early childhood. Two- to 6-year-old children were asked to name two different pictures presented simultaneously either one in each visual hemifield (bilateral condition) or both in a single hemifield (either right or left, unilateral condition). In the bilateral condition, children were overall more accurate in naming right visual field than left visual field pictures.

Neural correlates of woman face processing by 2-month-old infants.

The age of 2 months marks a turn in the development of face processing in humans with the emergence of recognition based on internal feature configuration. We studied the neural bases of this early cognitive expertise, critical for adaptive behavior in the social world, by mapping with positron emission tomography the brain activity of 2-month-old alert infants while looking at unknown woman faces. We observed the activation of a distributed network of cortical areas that largely overlapped the adult face-processing network, including the so-called fusiform face area.