ORIGINAL PAPER The Development of Face Recognition; Hippocampal and Frontal Lobe Contributions Determined with MEG Margot J. Taylor • Travis Mills • Elizabeth W. Pang Received: 14 January 2011 / Accepted: 21 June 2011 / Published online: 19 July 2011 Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 Abstract Face recognition skills improve steadily across childhood, yet few studies have investigated the develop- ment of the neural sources underlying these processes. We investigated the developmental changes in brain activity related specifically to face recognition, using magnetoen- cephalography (MEG). We studied 70 children (6–19 years) and 20 young adults. Photographs of 240 neutral faces were used in two blocks of 1-back recognition tasks; one block contained faces upright and in the other block, faces were presented inverted. MEG activity was recorded on a 151 sensor CTF/MISL system. A structural MRI was acquired for all subjects. We focussed on the repetition effects of the faces, in a 280–680 ms window, contrasting the repeated faces with the first presentation of the faces. The analyses showed reliable right hippocampal activation across all age groups, and a right inferior frontal activation that emerged for repeated, recognised faces at 10–11 years of age. The hippocampi are implicated in memory function and we demonstrate that the right hippocampus is specifically involved for face recognition. Further, we determined that this comes on-line by early school age, which is consistent with the known early maturation of the hippocampi. In contrast, we show that the right inferior frontal areas do not come on-line until later in childhood, consistent with the protracted development of the frontal cortices. These data support the hypothesis that different age groups use different strategies and neural structures for face recognition. Keywords Recognition memory Á Faces Á MEG Á Frontal lobes Á Hippocampus Introduction Face recognition is a crucial and highly sophisticated ability in humans. The development of this skill has been argued to occur gradually over childhood, with increases in recognition of face identity and emotion improving through adolescence (e.g., Kolb et al. 1992; Chung and Thomson 1995; Herba et al. 2006). Face processing, in fact, contin- ues to evolve with age, with older adults performing face processing tasks using different strategies than younger adults (Chaby et al. 2011; Gunning-Dixon et al. 2003). Skill in face recognition has been attributed in part to acquiring expertise in processing the configural structure of faces (e.g., Baenninger 1994; Mondloch et al. 2006; Maurer et al. 2002), often assessed with the use of inverted faces, as face inversion disrupts configural more than fea- tural processing of faces (Yin 1969; Rhodes et al. 1993), in children as well as adults (Pascalis et al. 2001; Tanaka et al. 1998; Mondloch et al. 2002). Some recent investigations have argued, however, that face recognition matures early (e.g., Crookes and McKone 2009; This is one of the several papers published together in Brain Topography on the ‘‘Special Issue: Brain Imaging across the Lifespan’’. M. J. Taylor (&) Á T. Mills Department of Diagnostic Imaging, Hospital for Sick Children, 555 University Ave, Toronto, ON M5G 1X8, Canada e-mail: margot.taylor@sickkids.ca M. J. Taylor Á E. W. Pang Division of Neurology, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada M. J. Taylor Á E. W. Pang Programme in Neurosciences and Mental Health, Research Institute, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada M. J. Taylor Á E. W. Pang University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada 123 Brain Topogr (2011) 24:261–270 DOI 10.1007/s10548-011-0192-z