Children's Brain Responses to Optic Flow Vary by Pattern Type and Motion Speed

Structured patterns of global visual motion called optic flow provide crucial information about an observer's speed and direction of self-motion and about the geometry of the environment. Brain and behavioral responses to optic flow undergo considerable postnatal maturation, but relatively litt...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2016-06, Vol.11 (6), p.e0157911-e0157911
Main Authors: Gilmore, Rick O, Thomas, Amanda L, Fesi, Jeremy
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Adults
Analysis
Analysis of Variance
Animal behavior
Biology and Life Sciences
Brain
Brain - physiology
Brain research
Channels
Child
Child development
Child, Preschool
Children
Children & youth
Coherence
Contraction
EEG
Electroencephalography
Female
Health aspects
Humans
Male
Medicine and Health Sciences
Monkeys & apes
Motion detection
Motion Perception - physiology
Neural networks
Neuroimaging
Optic flow
Optic Flow - physiology
Optics
People and Places
Psychology
Psychophysics
Research and Analysis Methods
Social Sciences
Visual observation
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Summary:Structured patterns of global visual motion called optic flow provide crucial information about an observer's speed and direction of self-motion and about the geometry of the environment. Brain and behavioral responses to optic flow undergo considerable postnatal maturation, but relatively little brain imaging evidence describes the time course of development in motion processing systems in early to middle childhood, a time when psychophysical data suggest that there are changes in sensitivity. To fill this gap, electroencephalographic (EEG) responses were recorded in 4- to 8-year-old children who viewed three time-varying optic flow patterns (translation, rotation, and radial expansion/contraction) at three different speeds (2, 4, and 8 deg/s). Modulations of global motion coherence evoked coherent EEG responses at the first harmonic that differed by flow pattern and responses at the third harmonic and dot update rate that varied by speed. Pattern-related responses clustered over right lateral channels while speed-related responses clustered over midline channels. Both children and adults show widespread responses to modulations of motion coherence at the second harmonic that are not selective for pattern or speed. The results suggest that the developing brain segregates the processing of optic flow pattern from speed and that an adult-like pattern of neural responses to optic flow has begun to emerge by early to middle childhood.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0157911