Neural Pathways of Visual Face Recognition Immediately After Birth

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

The present study aimed to investigate the electrophysiological correlates of face-identity recognition in newborn infants immediately after birth. Electroencephalographic acquisition was continuously recorded in 23 newborn infants (3 < age < 24 h of life) during the following visual task: presentation of a woman's face for 60 s ("known face"); random presentation of 50 known faces, 50 novel women's faces, and 50 chessboards (for 2 s each). The final sample included in ERP analyses was composed of 11 newborn infants (male/female: 6/5; age: 5 h 16' ± 3 h 51'). A greater negative amplitude of the N290 and smaller P400 and LC2 were found in response to the known face compared with the novel one in the left hemisphere. A shorter N290 latency was detected during the known face presentation compared with the novel one, and a longer latency of the same component was observed during novel face presentation compared with the chessboard. These findings suggest that newborns process a face differently from an object at birth and that they can discriminate a new face from a familiar one previously viewed for one minute.