Role of dorsal and ventral stream development in biological motion perception

Abstract

Little is known about the functional development of dorsal and ventral visual streams. The right posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) represents a pivotal point of the two streams and is involved in the perception of biological motion. Here, we compared brain activity between children (aged 5-7 years) and adults (aged 20-32 years) while they were viewing point-light dot animations of biological motion. Biological motion-related activation was found in right pSTS of adults, and in right fusiform gyrus and left middle temporal lobe of children. Group comparisons revealed increased activity in pSTS for adults and in fusiform gyrus for children. Only poorly performing children showed fusiform gyrus activity. These findings indicate that pSTS functioning is not adult-like at the age of 6 years. AbstractLittle is known about the functional development of areas within dorsal and ventral visual streams. The right posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) represents a pivotal point of the two streams and is involved in the perception of biological motion (BM). Here, we compared brain activity between children (5-7 y) and adults (20-32 y) while they were viewing point-light dot animations of BM. Adults showed BM related activation in right pSTS, whereas in children right fusiform gyrus (FG) and left hMT+ was activated. Group comparisons revealed increased activity in right pSTS for adults and in right FG for children. Only poorly performing children showed FG activity. These findings indicate that dorsal stream and pSTS functioning is not adult-like at age six.

Occipital cortical thickness in very low birth weight born adolescents predicts altered neural specialization of visual semantic category related neural networks

“…On the contrary, the older VLBW group shows a pattern that partly resembles a pattern one might expect of a younger group . Children typically show reduced activity in the dorsal visual stream compared to adults for visual motion perception and attention/working memory related tasks Klingberg, 2006;Lichtensteiger et al, 2008), while they show enhanced unspecific posterior ventral activity and reduced specific anterior ventral activity that might be associated with underdeveloped visual category specialization and neural tuning (Cantlon et al, 2011;Peelen et al, 2009). Our findings are interesting in comparison with a study that investigated typical neural development of visual semantic networks for animal and tool pictures (Dekker et al, 2011).…”

“…Functional brain imaging studies revealed enhanced dorsal visual stream activity in adults compared to children related to motion defined visual perception as well as visuospatial memory and attention Klingberg, 2006;. By contrast object recognition related activity in the ventral stream showed reduced activity related to unspecific object categories (Cantlon et al, 2011;Golarai et al, 2007;Klaver et al, 2008;Lichtensteiger et al, 2008;Passarotti, Smith, DeLano, & Huang, 2007;Peelen et al, 2009). It was suggested that neural tuning may increase neural specificity towards specialized object categories in the ventral stream (Grill-Spector, Golarai, & Gabrieli, 2008), whereas dorsal stream enhancement may reflect consolidation mediated specialization .…”

The visual perception of motion by observers with autism spectrum disorders: A review and synthesis

“…In typical observers, the patterns of perceptual sensitivity described above correlate with levels of neural activity in the STSp during the perception of PLDs of human and animal movement (Lichtensteiger, Loenneker, Bucher, Martin, & Klaver, 2008;Pyles et al, 2007). STSp activity becomes increasingly tuned to the perception of human movement relative to object movement in typical children (Carter & Pelphrey, 2006) but not in young observers with ASD (Pelphrey & Carter, 2008).…”

Microstructural development: Organizational differences of the fiber architecture between children and adults in dorsal and ventral visual streams

“…One hypothesis is that higher cognitive functions, including the development of dorsal stream function, require organized inter and intrahemisphere connectivity [Aboitiz and Montiel, 2003;Baizer et al, 1991]. The development of these functional networks may not be mature at age 6 [Freire et al, 2006;Klaver et al, 2008;Kovács et al, 1999;Lichtensteiger et al, 2008].…”

“…Some studies on visual development suggested that one of the streams may mature later than the other without providing neuroimaging evidence for this effect [Jü ttner et al, 2006;Kovács et al, 1999;Rentschler et al, 2004]. In a few cases, functional brain imaging studies have demonstrated that dorsal stream areas develop late Lichtensteiger et al, 2008], but specialized areas related to perceptual identification and memory of faces and objects within the ventral stream have also been shown to be immature at age 7 [Gathers et al, 2004;Golarai et al, 2007]. One important way to investigate large scale functional networks is by searching for the white matter connections underlying these networks [Gong et al, 2009].…”