Golijeh Golarai
Senior Research Associate

Development of Functional Specialization in the Human Ventral Stream

Face, place and object -selective regions in children, adolescents and adults. Face, place and object-selective activations are shown for one representative child (eight years old) and one representative adult (adapted from Golarai, et al., Nature Neuroscience 2007). Activation maps were generated by a voxel-by-voxel general linear model (GLM) (no spatial smoothing) in each subject and are shown on an inflated cortical surface of each of the individual subjects in the ventral view. Red: faces > abstract objects; green: scenes > abstract objects; blue: abstract objects > textures created by scrambling intact object images. The threshold for all contrasts was at the same significance level (P < .000001, voxel level, uncorrected). Abbreviations: FFA, fusiform face area; PPA, parahippocampal place area; LOC, lateral occipital complex. Only the ventral aspect of the LOC is visible in this view.

To read more about this, see Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2008.