The next talk in the CDC seminar series will be given by<br><br>Sarah Lloyd-Fox, Birkbeck, University of London<br>Date: Wednesday, May 18, 2011, 5 PM<br>Location: CEU Cognitive Development Center, Hattyú u. 14, 3rd floor<br>




<br><span></span><a href="http://www.ceu.hu/node/21879" target="_blank">Cortical mapping of human action perception during infancy: A functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy investigation</a><br><br>Abstract: The ability to identify cues from motion, such as eye gaze shifts,  
emotional expression, articulation of the mouth and manual gestures,  
provides the foundation of social perception and allows us to comprehend
  and interpret the intentions, language, emotions and desires of 
others.  The cortical mapping of human action perception in the infant 
brain is  poorly understood, largely due to the limitations of available
  neuroimaging methods. The research presented in this talk investigated
  cortical activation to facial and manual human actions using 
functional  near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). fNIRS provides an 
elegant solution  to bridge this methodological gap, and is an emerging 
new technology for  investigating developmental cognitive neuroscience. 
Over a series of  experiments, four to six-month-old infants watched 
life-size videos of  adult actors moving their hand, their mouth, or 
their eyes, while  haemodynamic responses were recorded over the frontal
 and temporal  cortices. The data presented in Study 1 and 2 suggests 
that a localised  superior temporal region of the cortex is responsive 
to the observation  of complex social human actions, and not to 
non-human mechanical  actions. Study 3 reveals localised cortical 
responses to differing  dynamic facial and manual human action cues in 
regions of the frontal  and temporal cortex with partially separable 
localised responses evident  to different types of human movements. 
Finally Study 4, which  investigated these effects further, presents 
optical data alongside  concurrent eye-tracking data and additional 
behavioural measures of  manual dexterity. These preliminary findings 
suggest that infant’s own  fine motor abilities may be correlated with 
cortical activation to the  perception of another’s hand movements. 
Taken together, this work  illuminates hitherto undocumented maps of 
cortical activation to human  action perception in the early developing 
brain, and demonstrate the  potential that fNIRS offers for 
developmental research.