Differential Development of Scene Processing Regions in the Human Brain Öffentlichkeit

Abstract

Humans can effortlessly recognize the kind of place (or “scene”) they are in, as well as navigate through that scene. Losing these abilities – as a result of stroke, disease, or developmental disorder – has devastating effects on quality of life. Evidence suggests that two specialized brain regions support these remarkable cognitive processes: the parahippocampal place area (PPA), supporting “scene categorization” (i.e., recognizing a scene as a kitchen or a beach), and the occipital place area (OPA), supporting “visually-guided navigation” (i.e., navigating through the immediately visible scene). While the functions of these two systems are increasingly clear, almost nothing is known about how these systems develop over childhood. Some behavioral work suggests that the navigation ability develops slower than the categorization ability. In the current project, we look for neural evidence of such differential development using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in children ages 5-8. We predict that OPA will develop later than PPA. We investigate the development of these regions by measuring their responses to i) video clips of first-person perspective motion through scenes (“Dynamic Scenes”) and ii) still frames taken from these same movies (“Static Scenes”). We found that OPA’s sensitivity to scene motion information, a critical cue for its role in navigation, increases from ages 5 to 8, while no developmental changes were observed in PPA across this same age range. These findings support our prediction that the navigation system (including OPA) develops independently and differentially from the categorization system (including PPA).

Table of Contents

1. Introduction……………….................................................................................... 1                               

                       1.1 Scene-selective Cortex ................................................................ 1

                       1.2 Two Systems for Scene Processing .............................................. 3

                       1.3 Development of Scene Processing Abilities ................................ 5

                       1.4 Present Study .............................................................................. 7

2. Methods………………........................................................................................... 8

                       2.1 Participants ……………….............................................................. 8

2.2 Experimental Design ……………….................................................................... 8

                                   2.21 Stimuli……………….......................................................... 8

                                   2.22 Procedure ..................................................................... 10

2.3 fMRI Scanning ............................................................................................... 10

2.4 Data Quality Control ..................................................................................... 11

2.5 Data Analysis ................................................................................................ 12

3. Results ............................................................................................................ 13

           3.1 Domain Selectivity .............................................................................. 13

           3.2 Motion Selectivity ............................................................................... 15

4. Discussion ....................................................................................................... 18

5. Figures ............................................................................................................ 23

           Figure 1 ..................................................................................................... 23

           Figure 2 ..................................................................................................... 24

           Figure 3 ..................................................................................................... 25

           Figure 4 ..................................................................................................... 26

6. References ...................................................................................................... 27

 

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School	Emory College
Department	Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology
Degree	B.S.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Biology, Neuroscience Psychology, Cognitive
Stichwort	neuroimaging development scene-processing
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Daniel Dilks, Emory University
Committee Members	Leah Roesch, Emory University Philippe Rochat, Emory University

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