Gamma oscillations and object processing in the infant brain

An enduring controversy in neuroscience concerns how the brain "binds" toge ther separately coded stimulus features to form unitary representations of objects. Recent evidence has indicated a close link between this binding pr ocess and 40-hertz (gamma-band) oscillations generated by localized neural circuits. In a separate line of research, the ability of young infants to p erceive objects as unitary and bounded has become a central focus for debat es about the mechanisms of perceptual development. Here we demonstrate that binding-related 40-hertz oscillations are evident in the infant brain arou nd 8 months of age, which is the same age at which behavioral and event-rel ated potential evidence indicates the onset of perceptual binding of spatia lly separated static visual features.