Moreover, it suggests that the objects in the scene are processed as separate objects in specific locations. The PSW effect differed for the object change and location change as compared to the switch, while the Nc indicated a similar initial response to the object change, location change, and switch. If the stimuli would have been processed Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical as complete pictures, the similar levels of attention during the Nc period would likely have led to a similar PSW in all oddball conditions. However, the PSW was only present when either
a new object was placed into the scene, or a new location was occupied indicating that infants process the objects in the Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical scene as separate objects. The ability of infants to process objects on a computer screen as separate objects opens up the possibility to use computerized environments for studying more complex use of objects, for example landmark use, in infants. The elicitation of an identical Nc component in all oddball conditions and a similar PSW in the location change and identity change conditions differs from findings in research on adult object processing showing different ERP effects for location change, object change, and switch Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical (Van Hoogmoed et al. 2012). The differently distributed N2 and N3 effects for location change versus
Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical identity change in adults suggest that location and identity of objects are processed in distinct brain regions. This finding is in line with the theory of Ungerleider and Mishkin (1982) on the segregation of the dorsal and ventral stream. Many studies have provided evidence for a structural or functional segregation (Tanaka Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical et al. 1991; Haxby et al. 1994; Ungerleider and Haxby 1994; Duhamel et al. 1997; Munk et al. 2002; Pihlajamaki et al. 2005; Jackson et al. 2011), while some contradictory evidence has also been found (Sereno
and Maunsell 1998; Op de Beeck and Vogels 2000; Jellema et al. 2004; Cichy et al. 2011). The dorsal/ventral distinction has been a key element in theories on object processing in infancy (Leslie et many al. 1998; Mareschal et al. 1999; Schlesinger 2006) and both streams have been shown to be developed already in 5- to 7-month-old infants (Wilcox et al. 2010). Our results reveal similarly distributed Nc effects in response to all manipulations and similar PSW effects to both object and location change, which may imply immaturely developed visual pathways in the infant brain, contradicting the theories on infants’ object processing. However, whereas in adults different scalp distributions suggest the involvement of different underlying selleck inhibitor neural generators, a similar distribution for all conditions in infants does not necessarily imply a contribution of identical neural generators.