Development of Category-Selective Domains in Infant Macaque Inferotemporal Cortex

In humans and in monkeys inferotemporal cortex, the object recognition part of the visual pathway, is divided up into domains specialized for processing specific object categories, such as faces, text, places, and body parts. It is not known how innate programs and early experience interact to generate this parcellation. To illuminate this question we did functional MRI on infant and juvenile macaques. We have developed techniques for safely and non-invasively doing functional MRI in alert infant macaques. We have scanned monkeys as early as 3 months of age and thereafter as IT develops. We find a rostro-caudal gradient of development of visual responsiveness. We further find that in the youngest monkeys we have scanned (3 months & 6 months of age) IT initially does not show clear segregation into category-selective domains but does show robust retinotopic organization. Category-selective domains emerge during the second year of life. In two monkeys the earliest appearing domain is the anteriormost face patch. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2014