Visual processing of biological motion (BM) produced by living organisms is of immense value for successful daily-life activities and, in particular, for adaptive social behavior and nonverbal communication. Investigation of BM perception in neurodevelopmental disorders related to autism, preterm birth, and genetic conditions substantially contributes to our understanding of the neural mechanisms underpinning the extraordinary tuning to BM. The most prominent research outcome is that patients with daily-life deficits in social cognition are also compromised on visual body motion processing. This raises the question of whether performance on body motion perception tasks may serve a hallmark of social cognition. Overall, the findings highlight the role of structural and functional brain connectivity for proper functioning of the neural circuitry involved in BM processing and visual social cognition that share topographically and dynamically overlapping neural networks.

We tested the ability of children 3–5 years of age to recognise biological motion displays. Children and adults were presented with moving point-light configurations depicting a walking person, four-legged animals (dogs), and a bird. Participants were able to reliably recognise displays with biological motion, but failed in the identification of a static (four consecutive frames taken from each sequence) version. The results indicate that, irrespective of the highly reduced and unusual structural information available in point-light displays, biological motion is sufficient for reliable recognition of human and non-human forms at an age as early as 3 years. Moreover, 5-year-olds exhibit the ceiling level of recognition. The findings are discussed in the context of the neuropsychological and brain mechanisms involved in biological motion perception.

Recognition of biological motion is one of the essential ingredients of human evolutionary survival. When biological motion is revealed solely by a set of light dots on the joints of an invisible human figure, the perceptual system reliably distinguishes it from similar configurations. Here, we assessed the changes in neuromagnetic cortical responses during visual perception of biological motion. Healthy humans saw a randomized set of stimuli consisting of a point-light canonical walker and a scrambled configuration in which the spatial positions of dots were randomly rearranged on the screen. In separate runs, configurations were presented either within an upright or inverted (180°) orientation in the image plane. Participants performed a one-back repetition task lifting a forefinger in response to the second of two consecutive identical stimuli of each type. Both recognizable upright and non-recognizable inverted walkers evoke enhancements in oscillatory gamma brain activity (25–30 Hz) over the left occipital cortices as early as 100 ms from stimulus onset. Only a recognizable upright walker, however, yields further consecutive peaks over the parietal (130 ms) and right temporal (170 ms) lobes. Scrambled displays do not elicit any increases in the gamma response. The stimulus-specific time course and topographic dynamics of cortical oscillatory activity indicate that the brain rapidly dissociates spatial coherence and meaning revealed through biological movement.

Recent neuroimaging and psychophysical findings suggest that perception and production of human body motion share a common representational network. In the present study, we address the issue of whether early disorders in production of biological movement correspond to impairment in biological motion perception. By using the simultaneous masking paradigm, we examined visual sensitivity to biological motion in adolescents (aged 13–16 years) who were born very preterm (at 27–33 gestational weeks). In a confidence rating procedure, the presence of a point‐light walking figure embedded in a moving mask was judged. The participants differed in their locomotion ability, ranging from normal to a complete walking disability exhibiting signs of leg‐dominated bilateral spastic cerebral palsy (BS‐CP) caused by periventricular leukomalacia (PVL). Irrespective of an ability to produce movement, patients with a similar extent of PVL in the parieto‐occipital complex exhibit nearly the same sensitivity to biological motion. Sensitivity correlates negatively with the extent of PVL over the parieto‐occipital complex, whereas neither the severity of motor disorder nor the severity of pyramidal tract affection relate significantly to the sensitivity index. The data suggest that perception of biological motion is not substantially affected by an observer’s early restrictions in body movement. Instead, the findings favour the assumption that the common network for perception and production of biological motion might be inherent for the brain. Motor experience per se does not appear to be necessary for the visual analysis of human movement.

Brain lesions to the white matter in peritrigonal regions, periventricular leukomalacia, in children who were born prematurely represent an important model for studying limitations on brain development. The lesional pattern is of early origin and bilateral, that constrains the compensatory potential of the brain. We suggest that (i) topography and severity of periventricular lesions may have a long-term predictive value for cognitive and social capabilities in preterm birth survivors; and (ii) periventricular lesions may impact cognitive and social functions by affecting brain connectivity, and thereby, the dissociable neural networks underpinning these functions. A further pathway to explore is the relationship between cerebral palsy and cognitive outcome. Restrictions caused by motor disability may affect active exploration of surrounding and social participation that may in turn differentially impinge on cognitive development and social cognition. As an outline for future research, we underscore sex differences, as the sex of a preterm newborn may shape the mechanisms by which the developing brain is affected.