Facial Recognition Area Of The Brain Keeps Growing Throughout Childhood [STUDY]

• comments
• 
• 

A recent study found that the part of the human brain responsible for facial recognition seems to grow new tissue throughout childhood. The researchers discovered that this part of the brain that helps to distinguish one face from another continues to grow new tissues all the way into adulthood.

It was previously thought that the growth of the brain tissue halted in early life as brain development during childhood usually involves pruning back neural connections rather than growing new ones.

The researchers used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to identify regions of the brain's visual cortex that showed more activity when processing faces and also regions that lit up when processing images of locations.

They compared the structures of those regions in the brains of 22 children who are between the age of 5 to 12 years old with that of 25 adults aged between 22 to 28 years old. There was no dramatic change between childhood and adulthood in the object-sensitive area (collateral sulcus) but the face recognition area known as the fusiform gyrus recorded a 12.6 percent increase in the amount of brain tissue.

The researchers found that the facial recognition part of the brain expanded from childhood to adolescence, unlike other parts which had already formed. They also discovered that adults have denser fusiform gyrus brain tissue than children and contained a different composition of cells and proteins, according to Science News.

However, MRI scans alone cannot reveal the types of cells and structures that cause the increased tissue in adults' fusiform gyrus. But evidence from previous studies suggests that the effect might come in part from increase in dendrites which might branch out more and make more connections.

The growth of the brain tissue is not due to the birth of fresh neurons, but from existing neurons growing into more complex patterns, and developing a thicker coating of material called myelin, according to The Guardian. The actual number of nerve cells is not increasing, though, the lead researcher and a neuroscientist at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Jesse Gomez says.

The visual cortex includes regions that process many different kinds of visual stimuli such as, faces and places, movement and colors.

Brad Duchaine, a psychologist at Dartmouth College noted that it is not clear whether the increase in brain tissue is really limited to facial recognition areas as the study only compared facial and location processing. However, the findings show that the brain circuits behind different types of visual processing do not all develop in a uniform pattern.

The researchers think similar tissue growth might occur in other parts of the visual cortex, and hope to check the development of these other specialized regions In future studies.

Kalanit Grill-Spector, a neuroscientist at Stanford University in California, said the finding will not only help scientists understand some aspects of the ageing process, but also what happens in disorders that make it hard for people to spot familiar faces.

They published their findings in the journal of science.