Scientists have found that babies as young as two months old are capable of categorising objects in their brains, according to research from Trinity College Dublin, Queen’s University Belfast, and Stanford University, reports RTE.
This occurs far earlier than experts previously believed, and the discovery comes from a study supported by the Coombe and Rotunda Hospitals in Dublin, reports RTE.
Brain imaging techniques combined with artificial intelligence models were employed to examine 130 infants aged two months.
While resting on a beanbag and wearing noise-cancelling headphones, the babies viewed bright and colourful images for periods of 15 to 20 minutes, reports RTE.
Researchers then applied functional MRI scans to observe how the infants’ brains reacted to images representing 12 everyday visual categories, including a cat, bird, rubber duck, shopping trolley, and tree.
Artificial intelligence models subsequently analysed the patterns to reveal how the babies’ brains encoded and distinguished these various visual categories, reports RTE.
The findings have been published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
The research was spearheaded by a team from the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience and the School of Psychology, reports RTE.
Dr Anna Truzzi, now at Queen’s University Belfast and a co-author of the paper, had her own daughter Maeve participate in the study at just two months old.
“As a mother and a researcher, it is fascinating to find out more about what a very young baby can see and make sense of!” Dr Truzzi said, reports RTE.
“Until recently, we could not reliably measure how specific areas of the infant brain interpreted visual information. By combining AI and neuroimaging, our study offers a very unique insight, which helps us to understand much more about how babies learn in their first year of life, reports RTE.
“The first year is a period of rapid and intricate brain development. This study provides new foundational knowledge which will help guide early-years education, inform clinical support for neurodevelopmental conditions and inspire more biologically-grounded approaches in artificial intelligence,” reports RTE.
Dr Cliona O’Doherty, the lead author who carried out the work in Trinity’s Cusack Lab and is now at Stanford University, commented on the implications, reports RTE.
“Parents and scientists have long wondered what goes on in a baby’s mind and what they actually see when they view the world around them,” she said, reports RTE.
“This research highlights the richness of brain function in the first year of life.”
“Although at two months, infants’ communication is limited by a lack of language and fine motor control, their minds were already not only representing how things look, but figuring out to which category they belonged. This shows that the foundations of visual cognition are already in place from very early on and much earlier than expected,” reports RTE.
Rhodri Cusack, Thomas Mitchell Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Trinity’s School of Psychology and Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, who led the project, described the study’s significance.
“This study represents the largest longitudinal study with functional magnetic resonance imaging of awake infants,” she said, reports RTE.
“The rich dataset capturing brain activity opens up a whole new way to measure what babies are thinking at a very early age. It also highlights the potential for neuroimaging and computational models to be used as a diagnostic tool in very young infants, reports RTE.
“Babies learn much more quickly than today’s AI models and by studying how they do this, we hope to inspire a new generation of AI models that learn more efficiently, so reducing their economic and environmental costs,” reports RTE.
Prof Eleanor Molloy, a neonatologist from Children’s Health Ireland and co-author, highlighted the value of the high success rates achieved in awake neuroimaging.
“There is a pressing need for greater understanding of how neurodevelopmental disorders change early brain development, and awake fMRI has considerable potential to address this,” reports RTE.
The research received funding support from the European Research Council and Research Ireland.
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