Cortical signatures of visual body representation develop in human infancy

Jiale Yang; So Kanazawa; Masami K Yamaguchi; Joydeep Bhattacharya; Andrew Bremner

doi:10.1038/s41598-023-41604-5

Cortical signatures of visual body representation develop in human infancy

Jiale Yang^*, So Kanazawa, Masami K Yamaguchi, Joydeep Bhattacharya, Andrew Bremner

^*Corresponding author for this work

Psychology

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Abstract

Human infants cannot report their experiences, limiting what we can learn about their bodily awareness. However, visual cortical responses to the body, linked to visual awareness and selective attention in adults, can be easily measured in infants and provide a promising marker of bodily awareness in early life. We presented 4- and 8-month-old infants with a flickering (7.5 Hz) video of a hand being stroked and recorded steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs). In half of the trials, the infants also received tactile stroking synchronously with visual stroking. The 8-month-old, but not the 4-month-old infants, showed a significant enhancement of SSVEP responses when they received tactile stimulation concurrent with the visually observed stroking. Follow-up experiments showed that this enhancement did not occur when the visual hand was presented in an incompatible posture with the infant's own body or when the visual stimulus was a body-irrelevant video. Our findings provide a novel insight into the development of bodily self-awareness in the first year of life.

Original language	English
Article number	14696
Number of pages	11
Journal	Scientific Reports
Volume	13
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-41604-5
Publication status	Published - 7 Sept 2023

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Cortical signatures of visual body representation develop in human infancy

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