FriSem

Jewelia Yao, Ph.D. Student in Psychology, admitted Autumn 2022

Title: Mapping the Development of Visual Function in Early and High-Level Visual Cortex: Insights from Cartoons

Abstract: Reading and face recognition play a crucial role in the development of socioemotional skills and academic performance in children. While reading and face recognition are often thought of as high-level cognitive skills, they are restricted by the part of the visual field, or the population receptive field (pRF), from which they process spatial information. Neurons performing spatial computations of these pRFs are located throughout the ventral visual stream, a processing stream that supports reading and face recognition. Surprisingly, pRFs have been largely understudied in developmental populations, particularly past the age of 12. Given the importance of spatial computations in the growth of reading and face recognition skills, we ask “how do spatial computations in the visual system develop from childhood, through adolescence, and into adulthood?” Using a novel experiment called toonotopy designed to drive high-level regions (Finzi et al., 2021), we leverage data from 17 kids and teens (ages 8-17) and 21 adults (ages 22-32) to 1) manually map and define retinotopic regions spanning from V1 to PHC in the ventral visual stream, 2) qualitatively and quantitatively assess the pRF properties in these regions, and 3) quantify development in these pRF properties from childhood into adulthood. Together, this work serves as a foundational platform for future endeavors aiming to establish the connections between pRF properties, category selectivity, and reading and face recognition.