Trial reportProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2013
Sensitive periods for the functional specialization of the neural system for human face processing.
Trial report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 42 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
42 citing papers in PubMed, 100 citations in OpenAlex.
- Early face deprivation leads to long-lasting deficits in cortical face processing.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Impact of a transient neonatal visual deprivation on the development of the ventral occipito-temporal cortex in humans.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Visual and Auditory Object Representations in Ventral Visual Cortex After Restoring Sight in Humans.Human brain mapping · 2025Article
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- Article
- At First Sight: Fetal Eye Movements Reveal a Preference for Face-Like Configurations From 26 Weeks of Gestation.Developmental science · 2025Article
- Motion's privilege in recognizing facial expressions following treatment for blindness.Current biology : CB · 2024Article
- Face-specific identification impairments following sight-providing treatment may be alleviated by an initial period of low visual acuity.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Associations Between Childhood Trauma Characteristics and Theory of Mind in Adults: Results From a Large, Diverse Sample.Child psychiatry and human development · 2024Article
- Butterfly effects in perceptual development: a review of the 'adaptive initial degradation' hypothesis.Developmental review : DR · 2024Article
- A critical period for developing face recognition.Patterns (New York, N.Y.) · 2024Article
- Sound suppresses earliest visual cortical processing after sight recovery in congenitally blind humans.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Longitudinal development of category representations in ventral temporal cortex predicts word and face recognition.Nature communications · 2023Article
- White matter plasticity following cataract surgery in congenitally blind patients.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Dynamic eye avoidance patterns in the high autistic traits group: An eye-tracking study.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Article
- Calibrating Vision: Concepts and Questions.Vision research · 2022Review
- Intramodal cortical plastic changes after moderate visual impairment in human amblyopia.iScience · 2022Article
- Head turning is an effective cue for gaze following: Evidence from newly sighted individuals, school children and adults.Neuropsychologia · 2022Article
- The Role of Visual Experience in Individual Differences of Brain Connectivity.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2022Article
- Congenitally blind adults can learn to identify face-shapes via auditory sensory substitution and successfully generalize some of the learned features.Scientific reports · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
The aim of the study was to identify possible sensitive phases in the development of the processing system for human faces. We tested the neural processing of faces in 11 humans who had been blind from birth and had undergone cataract surgery between 2 mo and 14 y of age. Pictures of faces and houses, scrambled versions of these pictures, and pictures of butterflies were presented while event-related potentials were recorded. Participants had to respond to the pictures of butterflies (targets) only. All participants, even those who had been blind from birth for several years, were able to categorize the pictures and to detect the targets. In healthy controls and in a group of visually impaired individuals with a history of developmental or incomplete congenital cataracts, the well-known enhancement of the N170 (negative peak around 170 ms) event-related potential to faces emerged, but a face-sensitive response was not observed in humans with a history of congenital dense cataracts. By contrast, this group showed a similar N170 response to all visual stimuli, which was indistinguishable from the N170 response to faces in the controls. The face-sensitive N170 response has been associated with the structural encoding of faces. Therefore, these data provide evidence for the hypothesis that the functional differentiation of category-specific neural representations in humans, presumably involving the elaboration of inhibitory circuits, is dependent on experience and linked to a sensitive period. Such functional specialization of neural systems seems necessary to archive high processing proficiency.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.