TY - JOUR TI - Rapid categorization of natural face images in the infant right hemisphere AU - de Heering, Adélaïde AU - Rossion, Bruno A2 - Culham, Jody C VL - 4 PY - 2015 DA - 2015/06/02 SP - e06564 C1 - eLife 2015;4:e06564 DO - 10.7554/eLife.06564 UR - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.06564 AB - Human performance at categorizing natural visual images surpasses automatic algorithms, but how and when this function arises and develops remain unanswered. We recorded scalp electrical brain activity in 4–6 months infants viewing images of objects in their natural background at a rapid rate of 6 images/second (6 Hz). Widely variable face images appearing every 5 stimuli generate an electrophysiological response over the right hemisphere exactly at 1.2 Hz (6 Hz/5). This face-selective response is absent for phase-scrambled images and therefore not due to low-level information. These findings indicate that right lateralized face-selective processes emerge well before reading acquisition in the infant brain, which can perform figure-ground segregation and generalize face-selective responses across changes in size, viewpoint, illumination as well as expression, age and gender. These observations made with a highly sensitive and objective approach open an avenue for clarifying the developmental course of natural image categorization in the human brain. KW - face perception KW - infant KW - right hemisphere KW - natural image KW - visual categorization JF - eLife SN - 2050-084X PB - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd ER -