Right STS responses to biological motion in infancy – An fNIRS study using point-light walkers

Abstract

Biological motion perception—our capacity to perceive the intrinsic motion of humans and animals—has been implicated as a precursor of social development in infancy. In the adult brain, several biological motion neural correlates have been identified; of particular importance, the right posterior superior temporal sulcus (rpSTS).We present a study, conducted with fNIRS, which measured brain activations in infants’ right posterior temporal region to point-light walkers, a standard stimulus category of biological motion perception studies.Seven-month-old infants (n = 23) participated in a within-subject blocked design with three experimental conditions and one baseline. Infants viewed: an intact upright point-light walker of a person approaching the observer; the same point-light walker stimulus but inverted; and a selected frame from the point-light walker stimulus, approaching the viewer at constant velocity with no articulated motion, close to object motion.We found activations for both the upright and the inverted point-light walkers. The rigid moving point-light walker frame did not elicit any response consistent with a functional activation in this region.Our results suggest that biological motion is processed differently in the right middle posterior temporal cortex in infancy, and that articulated motion is a critical feature in biological motion processing at this early age.