(left) In 2-5 month-old infants, face responses (purple) in the fusiform face area (FFA) are significantly greater than the responses to bodies (pink), toys (yellow), and landscapes (green). In the same infants, the response to faces in the superior temporal sulcus (STS; middle) and medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC; right) is greater than the response to bodies, toys, and landscapes.

Cortical Face-Selective Responses Emerge Early in Human Infancy

Peer reviewed publication, eNeuro

ByKosakowski HL, Cohen MA, Herrera L, Nichoson I, Kanwisher N, Saxe R. (2024). May 30, 2025

Summary

Social cognition often begins with face perception. In adults, several cortical regions respond robustly to faces, yet little is known about when and how these regions first arise in development. To test whether face selectivity changes in the first year of life, we combined two datasets, doubling the sample size relative to previous reports. In the approximate location of the fusiform face area, superior temporal sulcus, and medial prefrontal cortex but not occipital face area, face selectivity was present in the youngest group. These findings demonstrate that face-selective responses are present across multiple lobes of the brain very early in life.

Published Resources

Peer reviewed manuscript published in eNeuro.

Preprint.

Open Source Materials

All stimuli, data used to generate the figures, and code used to analyze the data are available in an OSF repository.

Example Stimuli

example face video
example body video
example object video
example scene video
example baseline video
example agent video