Representing occluded objects in the human infant brain

Abstract

One of the most striking phenomena in cognitive development has been the apparent failure of infants to show 'object permanence' in manual reaching tasks although they show evidence for representing hidden objects in studies measuring looking times. We report a neural correlate of object permanence in six-month-old infants: a burst of gamma-band EEG activity over the temporal lobe that occurs during an occlusion event and when an object is expected to appear from behind an occluder. We interpret this burst as being related to the infants' mental representation of the occluded object