Development of visual texture segregation during the first year of life: a high-density electrophysiological study

Abstract

There are important developmental changes occurring during infancy in visual cortical structures that underlie higher-order perceptual abilities. Using high-density electrophysiological recording techniques, the present study aimed to examine the development of visual mechanisms, during the first year of life, associated with texture segregation. Forty-two normal full term infants were tested at 1, 3, 6 or 12 months of age. Visual-evoked potentials to low-level stimuli varying in orientation (oriVEP) and higher-level textured stimuli (texVEP) were recorded from 128 scalp electrodes. Difference potentials were obtained to extract the VEP component associated specifically with texture segregation (tsVEP). Results show a clear developmental pattern regarding amplitude, latency and scalp distribution of tsVEP, which appears at around 3 months but does not reach maturity by 12 months of age. A reduction in latency is particularly evident between 3 and 6 months, whereas amplitude shows a gradual increase with a marked increment between 3 and 6 months for low-level orientation stimuli and between 6 and 12 months for higher-level textured stimuli. These developmental patterns are attributed to neural maturational processes such as myelination and synaptogenesis. The differential developmental rates can be explained by delayed maturational processes of brain regions involved in more complex visual processing.

Early childhood development of visual texture segregation in full-term and preterm children

“…1e). As a result, the activation associated with the lower-level processing was suppressed and the resulting negative wave, a difference potential, reflects only the tsVEP response (Arcand et al, 2007;Bach & Meigen, 1992;Bach et al, 2000;Lachapelle et al, 2004). For each oriVEP, texVEP and tsVEP waveform obtained for each participant, the N2 peak (or the texture-segregation N2 in the case of the subtraction) was identified for the electrode sites O1, O2 and Oz using semi-automatic detection.…”

“…In order to compare lower-level and higher-level VEPs, the same technique as stated in Arcand et al (2007) was used, which consists of adding together the two orientation VEPs responses (oriVEP; number of trials ranged between 65 and 133 trials, mean number of trials: 95.72) with the two textured VEPs (texVEP; number of trials ranged between 58 and 131, mean number of trials: 95.25). As proposed by Meigen (1990, 1992), the underlying principle for data analysis is based on the hypothesis that texture segregation is formed of both orientation processing and texture processing.…”

“…The same stimuli as in the study from Arcand et al (2007) were used. They were composed of four different stimuli, two lower-level (orientation) and two higher-level (textured), and were presented binocularly on a 40.5 Â 30.5 cm ViewSonic monitor (ViewSonic, Canada) at a distance of 114 cm from the child's eyes.…”

“…Early behavioral studies found it to appear around 9-12 months of age (Rieth & Sireteanu, 1994;Sireteanu & Rieth, 1992), while VEP studies suggested that the ability to discriminate texture-defined stimuli emerges around 14-18 weeks of age (Atkinson & Braddick, 1992). Using VEPs, Arcand et al (2007) demonstrated a clear developmental pattern characterized by changes in amplitude, latency and scalp distribution of texture segregation processes during the first year of life; tsVEPs appear approximately at 3 months of age, continue to develop until 12 months but are still immature at this age. Furthermore, van den Boomen, Lamme, and Kemner (2014) have studied the developmental trajectory of visual texture segregation in typically developing children aged from 7 to 18 years old.…”

Neuropsychologie, plasticité et épilepsie infantile

“…Les premiers travaux que nous avons effectués ont porté sur l'étude normative du développement sensoriel visuel et auditif. Dans ce contexte, nous avons évalué la maturation cérébrale en réponse à des stimulus visuels divers tels des renversements de damiers [27], la ségrégation de textures [28] et des stimulations lumineuses intermittentes [29]. Nous avons, notamment, pu mettre en évidence des changements importants survenant durant la période d'exubérance synaptique visuelle, soit entre 3 et 24 mois (Figure 4).…”