Expectations shape infants brains

Washington: Infants can use their expectations about the world to rapidly shape their developing brains, shows research. Portions of babies' brains responsible for visual processing respond not just to the presence of visual stimuli, but also to the mere expectation of visual stimuli.

Earlier, this type of sophisticated neural processing was thought to happen only in adults and not infants as their brains are still developing important neural connections. After exposing the infants to the sounds and images for a little over a minute, the researchers began omitting the image.

In the infants who were exposed to the pattern, brain activity was detected in the visual areas of the brain even when the image didn't appear as expected. This shows that infants not only learn about their external worlds, but are ready from very early in life to make predictions about the co-occurrence of events on the basis of a very brief previous experience.