Infant brains ‘develop faster than previously thought’

A new study has revealed that facial perception, a key element of infant cognitive evolution, may develop much faster than previously thought.

The University of Louvain research used a cap fitted with electrodes to monitor the brain activity of 15 babies as they watched a rapid succession of images, including 48 images of faces interspersed with 200 images of animals, plants and man made objects.

It was found that the ability to recognise faces was already highly evolved in babies as young as four months, contradicting the previous assumption that this ability develops around the same time infants learn to read.

Co-author Bruno Rossion, principal investigator at the University of Louvain, said: "Parents and carers are already aware of how quickly babies' brains develop but, until now, gathering evidence has been hard due to the limitations of the methods used."

This is an important discovery as it is known that damage to the right hemisphere can impair the ability to distinguish faces, making it critical to understand how it develops.

Similarly, damage to the left hemisphere can reduce a child's ability to understand language.