Age-related specificity of the processing of visual information in the system of working memory

In adults and seven- to eight-year-old children, event-related potentials (ERPs) were analyzed during quiet observation and detailed paired comparison of visual stimuli. In both age groups, we showed the differences in the initial stages (component N1) of sensory analysis in these situations. In adults, an increase in the negativity during the initial stages of analysis was observed in the caudal and central areas of the cortex during presentation of standard and test stimuli. In the frontal areas of the cortex, an increase in the negative potential was observed only in ERPs induced by the test stimulus. In children, an increase in the negativity at the initial phases of analysis of stimuli in the situation of working memory, as compared to quiet observation, was confined to the caudal areas of the cortex. Differential curves that characterize analysis of standard and test stimuli showed age-related differences in the initial and late phases of information processing under the conditions of working memory. In adults, the differential curves that characterize analysis of the standard stimulus were represented by negative phases, and the curves related to the test stimulus, by positive phases. In children, late phases of analysis of the standard and test stimuli had smaller differences as compared to adults: the late positive wave was predominant in the responses to both standard and test stimulus in the caudal areas of the cortex. In the frontal areas, there was no considerable increase in the amplitude of the late positive wave in response to the test stimulus. This fact, together with the absence of enhancement of initial negativity in the frontal areas, which reflects analysis of the test stimulus, indicates that the prefrontal cortex plays a smaller role in the comparison of the memory trace with the current information in seven- to eight-year-old children. The data obtained suggest that the central executive of working memory is not sufficiently mature in children aged seven to eight years.     

Ontogenetic characteristics of the development of slow negative and positive potentials during the performance of a visual perceptive task

In age aspect, topography and parameters were studied of late EPs and slow negative components (CNV) to successively presented visual stimuli: the preliminary signal and two compared contour images. Age characteristics of development of the frontal negativity N450 and the late positive complex (LPC) were revealed. in children 7 and 10 years old, the component N450 was present in response both to the preliminary and the first stimulus in the compared pair; LPC was recorded to all three presented visual stimuli. In 17 years old subjects and in adults, selectivity of N450 formation in the EP to the first of the compared stimuli and LPC to the second (imperative) stimulus correlates with involvement of rostral brain areas--central in youths, central and frontal ones in adults--both in the process of waiting (CNV) and evaluation of coming information (LPC).     

Reduced Face Aftereffects in Autism Are Not Due to Poor Attention

This study aimed to determine why face identity aftereffects are diminished in children with autism, relative to typical children. To address the possibility that reduced face aftereffects might reflect reduced attention to adapting stimuli, we investigated the consequence of controlling attention to adapting faces during a face identity aftereffect task in children with autism and typical children. We also included a size-change between adaptation and test stimuli to determine whether the reduced aftereffects reflect atypical adaptation to low- or higher-level stimulus properties. Results indicated that when attention was controlled and directed towards adapting stimuli, face identity aftereffects in children with autism were significantly reduced relative to typical children. This finding challenges the notion that atypicalities in the quality and/or quantity of children’s attention during adaptation might account for group differences previously observed in this paradigm. Additionally, evidence of diminished face identity aftereffects despite a stimulus size change supports an adaptive processing atypicality in autism that extends beyond low-level, retinotopically coded stimulus properties. These findings support the notion that diminished face aftereffects in autism reflect atypicalities in adaptive norm-based coding, which could also contribute to face processing difficulties in this group.     

The N170 component is sensitive to face-like stimuli: a study of Chinese Peking opera makeup

The N170 component is considered a neural marker of face-sensitive processing. In the present study, the face-sensitive N170 component of event-related potentials (ERPs) was investigated with a modified oddball paradigm using a natural face (the standard stimulus), human- and animal-like makeup stimuli, scrambled control images that mixed human- and animal-like makeup pieces, and a grey control image. Nineteen participants were instructed to respond within 1000 ms by pressing the ‘F’ or ‘J’ key in response to the standard or deviant stimuli, respectively. We simultaneously recorded ERPs, response accuracy, and reaction times. The behavioral results showed that the main effect of stimulus type was significant for reaction time, whereas there were no significant differences in response accuracies among stimulus types. In relation to the ERPs, N170 amplitudes elicited by human-like makeup stimuli, animal-like makeup stimuli, scrambled control images, and a grey control image progressively decreased. A right hemisphere advantage was observed in the N170 amplitudes for human-like makeup stimuli, animal-like makeup stimuli, and scrambled control images but not for grey control image. These results indicate that the N170 component is sensitive to face-like stimuli and reflect configural processing in face recognition.     

The Distinct Role of the Amygdala,Superior Colliculus and Pulvinar in Processing of Central and Peripheral Snakes

Introduction

Visual processing of ecologically relevant stimuli involves a central bias for stimuli demanding detailed processing (e.g., faces), whereas peripheral object processing is based on coarse identification. Fast detection of animal shapes holding a significant phylogenetic value, such as snakes, may benefit from peripheral vision. The amygdala together with the pulvinar and the superior colliculus are implicated in an ongoing debate regarding their role in automatic and deliberate spatial processing of threat signals.

Methods

Here we tested twenty healthy participants in an fMRI task, and investigated the role of spatial demands (the main effect of central vs. peripheral vision) in the processing of fear-relevant ecological features. We controlled for stimulus dependence using true or false snakes; snake shapes or snake faces and for task constraints (implicit or explicit). The main idea justifying this double task is that amygdala and superior colliculus are involved in both automatic and controlled processes. Moreover the explicit/implicit instruction in the task with respect to emotion is not necessarily equivalent to explicit vs. implicit in the sense of endogenous vs. exogenous attention, or controlled vs. automatic processes.

Results

We found that stimulus-driven processing led to increased amygdala responses specifically to true snake shapes presented in the centre or in the peripheral left hemifield (right hemisphere). Importantly, the superior colliculus showed significantly biased and explicit central responses to snake-related stimuli. Moreover, the pulvinar, which also contains foveal representations, also showed strong central responses, extending the results of a recent single cell pulvinar study in monkeys. Similar hemispheric specialization was found across structures: increased amygdala responses occurred to true snake shapes presented to the right hemisphere, with this pattern being closely followed by the superior colliculus and the pulvinar.

Conclusion

These results show that subcortical structures containing foveal representations such as the amygdala, pulvinar and superior colliculus play distinct roles in the central and peripheral processing of snake shapes. Our findings suggest multiple phylogenetic fingerprints in the responses of subcortical structures to fear-relevant stimuli.     

Developmental Changes in ERP Responses to Spatial Frequencies

Social interaction starts with perception of other persons. One of the first steps in perception is processing of basic information such as spatial frequencies (SF), which represent details and global information. However, although behavioural perception of SF is well investigated, the developmental trajectory of the temporal characteristics of SF processing is not yet well understood. The speed of processing of this basic visual information is crucial, as it determines the speed and possibly accuracy of subsequent visual and social processes. The current study investigated developmental changes in the temporal characteristics of selective processing of high SF (HSF; details) versus low SF (LSF; global). To this end, brain activity was measured using EEG in 108 children aged 3–15 years, while HSF or LSF grating stimuli were presented. Interest was in the temporal characteristics of brain activity related to LSF and HSF processing, specifically at early (N80) or later (P1 or N2) peaks in brain activity. Analyses revealed that from 7–8 years onwards HSF but not LSF stimuli evoked an N80 peak. In younger children, aged 3–8 years, the visual manipulation mainly affected the visual N2 peak. Selective processing of HSF versus LSF thus occurs at a rather late time-point (N2 peak) in young children. Although behavioural research previously showed that 3–6 year-olds can perceive detailed information, the current results point out that selective processing of HSF versus LSF is still delayed in these children. The delayed processing in younger children could impede the use of LSF and HSF for emotional face processing. Thus, the current study is a starting point for understanding changes in basic visual processing which underlie social development.     

Children aged 7–9 prefer cuteness in baby faces,and femininity in women's faces

Infant facial features are typically perceived as “cute,” provoking caretaking behaviours. Previous research has focused on adults' perceptions of baby cuteness, and examined how these perceptions are influenced by events of the adult reproductive lifespan, such as ovulation and menopause. However, globally, individuals of all ages, including pre-pubertal children, provide notable proportions of infant care. In this study, we recruited participants in and around northern England, and tested 330 adults and 65 children aged 7–9 using a forced-choice paradigm to assess preferences for infant facial cuteness in two stimulus sets and (as a control task) preferences for femininity in women's faces. We analysed the data with Hierarchical Bayesian Regression Models. The adults and children successfully identified infants who had been manipulated to appear cuter, although children's performance was poorer than adults' performance, and children reliably identified infant cuteness in only one of the two infant stimuli sets. Children chose the feminised over masculinised women's faces as more attractive, although again their performance was poorer than adults' performance. There was evidence for a female advantage in the tasks: girls performed better than boys when assessing the woman stimuli and one of the infant stimulus sets, and women performed better than men when assessing one of the infant stimulus sets. There was no evidence that cuteness judgements differed depending upon exposure to infants (children with siblings aged 0–2; adults with a baby caregiving role), or depending upon being just younger or older than the average age of menopause. Children and grandparents provide notable portions of infant caretaking globally, and cuteness perceptions could direct appropriate caregiving behaviour in these age groups, as well as in adults of reproductive age.     

Age-related size invariance in perception of illusory and fragmented contours

We investigated invariant perception to sizes of images. Observers were secondary school students aged 7–17 years and adults. Two types of stimuli were used: fragmented line drawing of common objects and discs with deleted sectors which represented illusory Kanizsa contours, when discs were in particular positions. In experiments with fragmented images, we found an improvement in image recognition with observer’s age, increasing up to 13–14 years. The probability of recognition of fragmented line drawings increased significantly with decreasing stimulus size for children aged 7–12 years, indicating that size invariance at recognition for fragmented line drawings was absent in these children. However, size invariance was found for observers aged 7–12 years and for adults in this task. Upon the Kanizsa illusion appearance, the ratio of the separation between discs and disc diameter was smaller when we used larger disc diameters. This ratio increased with increasing age of observers. The obtained results provide evidence for the absence of size invariance when perceiving the Kanizsa illusion under our experimental conditions.     

Rapid Plasticity in the Prefrontal Cortex during Affective Associative Learning

MultiCS conditioning is an affective associative learning paradigm, in which affective categories consist of many similar and complex stimuli. Comparing visual processing before and after learning, recent MultiCS conditioning studies using time-sensitive magnetoencephalography (MEG) revealed enhanced activation of prefrontal cortex (PFC) regions towards emotionally paired versus neutral stimuli already during short-latency processing stages (i.e., 50 to 80 ms after stimulus onset). The present study aimed at showing that this rapid differential activation develops as a function of the acquisition and not the extinction of the emotional meaning associated with affectively paired stimuli. MEG data of a MultiCS conditioning study were analyzed with respect to rapid changes in PFC activation towards aversively (electric shock) paired and unpaired faces that occurred during the learning of stimulus-reinforcer contingencies. Analyses revealed an increased PFC activation towards paired stimuli during 50 to 80 ms already during the acquisition of contingencies, which emerged after a single pairing with the electric shock. Corresponding changes in stimulus valence could be observed in ratings of hedonic valence, although participants did not seem to be aware of contingencies. These results suggest rapid formation and access of emotional stimulus meaning in the PFC as well as a great capacity for adaptive and highly resolving learning in the brain under challenging circumstances.     

Developmental changes in hierarchical visual stimulus recognition in children aged 5-10 years

Reaction time (RT) and performance accuracy in hierarchical visual stimulus recognition at local and global levels were studied in 95 healthy 5-6, 6-7, 7-8 and 9-10-year-old children and 10 adults. Task performance of all examined subjects, both children and adults, was faster and more accurate during global feature recognition (global advantage effect), with increased RT to incongruent stimuli in local condition (global interference effect). Significant inter-individual differences were found in the youngest group (5-6-year-olds): 7 children from the total number of 37 subjects failed to show the global advantage and global interference effects. Significant progressive shifts in performance accuracy during hierarchical stimulus recognition at both local and global levels were observed in the period between 6-7 and 7-8 years and then between 9-10 years and adulthood. The time course of age-dependent changes in recognition time was different for the global and local features of the hierarchical stimuli: the RT significantly decreased in every successive age group for local feature recognition beginning from 6-7-year-old children, whereas there was no significant difference between 7-8 and 9-10-year-old children in the RT of the recognition of the global feature. In the two younger groups (5-6 and 6-7 years), the stimulus type affected performance in a specific manner: RT increased to both incongruent and neutral stimuli irrespective of the level of the target feature. It was assumed that nonlinear developmental trends in hierarchical stimulus recognition parameters depend on both maturation of visual information processing and development of executive functions, especially those related to selection of relevant signals.     

The interaction of perception and attention at different stages in individual development

In the study carried out on children aged 10 years (51 persons), subjects aged 16-17 (11) and adults (19) characteristics of the perception and attention interaction were studied by means of electrophysiological parameters analysis (ERP, CNV, EEG) of the process of solution of various visual tasks. It has been shown that adequate brain provision of this process is based in adults both on the functional topographic differentiation and specialization of separate perceptive operations and on the possibility of controlling generalized and local activating influences according to task requirements. In children aged 10, not differing from the adults by the success of the perceptive activity, age peculiarities of its strategy are revealed connected with functional brain organization. Basic distinctive features of children perceptive activity are intensified regional specificity manifested both in responses to relevant and non-relevant stimuli, and excessive generalized activation testifying to incomplete structural-functional maturation of the frontal regions of the cerebral cortex. Increasing functional activity of these structures in ontogenesis provides for the selectivity of perceptive, cognitive and activating processes, adequate to the requirements of the task.     

Interictal Neurocognitive Processing of Visual Stimuli in Migraine: Evidence from Event-Related Potentials

Research has established decreased sensory habituation as a defining feature in migraine, while decreased cognitive habituation has only been found with regard to cognitive assessment of the relative probability of the occurrence of a stimulus event. Our study extended the investigation of interictal habituation in migraine to include cognitive processing when viewing of a series of visually-complex images, similar to those we encounter on the internet everyday. We examined interictal neurocognitive function in migraine from a habituation perspective, using a novel paradigm designed to assess how the response to a series of images changes over time. Two groups of participants--migraineurs (N = 25) and non-migraine controls (N = 25)--were asked to view a set of 232 unfamiliar logos in the context of a target identification task as their brain electrical responses were recorded via event-related potentials (ERPs). The set of logos was viewed serially in each of 10 separate trial blocks, with data analysis focusing on how the ERP responses to the logos in frontal electrodes from 200-600 ms changed across time within each group. For the controls, we found that the amplitude of the late positive potential (LPP) ERP component elicited by the logos had no significant change across trial blocks. In contrast, in migraineurs we found that the LPP significantly increased in amplitude across trial blocks, an effect consistent with a lack of habituation to visual stimuli seen in previous research. Our findings provide empirical support abnormal cognitive processing of complex visual images across time in migraineurs that goes beyond the sensory-level habituation found in previous research.     

Frequent Words Do Not Break Continuous Flash Suppression Differently from Infrequent or Nonexistent Words: Implications for Semantic Processing of Words in the Absence of Awareness

Continuous flash suppression (CFS) has been used as a paradigm to probe the extent to which word stimuli are processed in the absence of awareness. In the two experiments reported here, no evidence is obtained that word stimuli are processed up to the semantic level when suppressed through CFS. In Experiment 1, word stimuli did not break suppression faster than their pseudo-word variants nor was suppression time modulated by word frequency. Experiment 2 replicated these findings, but more critically showed that differential effects can be obtained with this paradigm using a simpler stimulus. In addition, pixel density of the stimuli did prove to be related to suppression time in both experiments, indicating that the paradigm is sensitive to differences in detectability. A third and final experiment replicated the well-known face inversion effect using the same set-up as Experiments 1 and 2, thereby demonstrating that the employed methodology can capture more high-level effects as well. These results are discussed in the context of previous evidence on unconscious semantic processing and two potential explanations are advanced. Specifically, it is argued that CFS might act at a level too low in the visual system for high-level effects to be observed or that the widely used breaking CFS paradigm is merely ill-suited to capture effects in the context of words.     

P3 responses to prosodic stimuli in adult autistic subjects

Autistic persons are known to have serious abnormalities in speech prosody. The present study attempted to ascertain whether autistic persons could discriminate and/or recognize prosodic contrasts in auditory stimuli. A group of 11 adult autistic subjects with normal IQ and an age-matched group of normal subjects were studied electrophysiologically and behaviorally during presentations of prosodic and phonemic stimuli. The cognitive P3 potential was recorded in response to rare (20%)/frequent (80%) presentations of phonemic stimuli, ‘ba/pa’, linguistic-prosodic stimuli, ‘Bob’. (statement)/‘Bob?’ (question), and emotional-prosodic stimuli, ‘Bob’ (happy)/‘Bob’ (happy)/’Bob’ (angry). Behaviorally, auditory discrimination was tested by requiring a button-press response to each presentation of the rare target stimulus and cognitive association was tested by requiring a match between the verbalized stimulus and an appropriate picture/word.Contrary to our hypothesis, the autistic subjects generally showed normal P3 responses to all stimuli and performed at a normal level in all behavioral tests. However, a significant autistic P3 response to the phoneme ‘pa’ was not demonstrated. This surprising result was reexamined and shown to reflect an unusually large autistic response to ‘pa’ as the frequent stimulus in the first recording block, this initial hyper-reactivity prevented a ‘frequent/rare’ differential when ‘pa’ was presented as the rare stimulus in a later recording block. In the P3 latency window, both the autistic and control groups showed the largest amplitude responses to emotional-prosodic stimuli; neither the N1 nor P2 showed these stimulus effects. Thus, ‘emotional sounds’ appear to be particularly effective in activating the neural substrate of the P3 generator system.Overall, these data indicate remarkably normal P3 and behavioral processing of prosodic stimuli by the high-functioning autistic subjects of this study.     

The determination of hepatitis A antibodies in epidemiological practice

Epidemiological analysis of hepatitis A morbidity in a city with the population of 500,000 persons in 1960-1987 was carried out. Three periods of morbidity rises among children aged 3-6 years and 7-14 years and living at the same areas (microdistricts) were established. Blood sera from healthy children were tested for the presence of antibodies to hepatitis A in enzyme immunoassay. The data on the sanitary and bacteriological study of tap water were analyzed. Unsatisfactory results of water analysis in different microdistricts correlated with the presence of antibodies in the population of these microregions and with the average morbidity indices for many years.     

A comparative electrophysiological study of regulatory components of working memory in adults and children of 7-8 years old. An analysis of coherence of EEG rhythms

Coherence at the frequency oftheta, alpha, and beta EEG rhythms was analyzed in 14 adults and 23 children of 7-8 years old while they performed cognitive tasks requiring an involvement of working memory (WM). We used the pair matching paradigm in which subjects had to match a pair of stimuli shown in succession in the central visual field. The pairs of verbal and visuo-spatial stimuli were mixed together and presented in a pseudo random order. Each pair was preceded by a warning signal that did not specify a modality of upcoming stimuli. We analyzed EEG segments recorded (i) in the rest condition, (ii) prior to the first (etalon) stimulus (maintenance of nonspecific voluntary attention), and (iii) prior to the second (test) stimulus (retention of information in WM). In the present study we focused on the regulatory functional components of WM, and therefore, the stimulus modality has not been taken into account. In adults, maintaining nonspecific voluntary attention was accompanied by an increase of the strength of theta-related functional coupling between medial areas of the frontal cortex and temporal cortical zones and by a strengthening of local beta-related functional connectivity in the anterior areas of the central cortex. In children, no such increase was found for theta-rhythm; for beta-rhythm the increase was limited to several short-range functional links. In adults, the retention of information in WM was accompanied by the growth in alpha coherence in distant fronto-parietal links, predominantly in the right hemisphere, while in children information retention was accompanied by the growth of theta-coherence in the inferio-temporal and parietal cortical regions. The results of the study point to a relative immaturity of the mechanisms of executive control of WM in children of 7-8 years old.     

Raised Middle-Finger: Electrocortical Correlates of Social Conditioning with Nonverbal Affective Gestures

Humans form impressions of others by associating persons (faces) with negative or positive social outcomes. This learning process has been referred to as social conditioning. In everyday life, affective nonverbal gestures may constitute important social signals cueing threat or safety, which therefore may support aforementioned learning processes. In conventional aversive conditioning, studies using electroencephalography to investigate visuocortical processing of visual stimuli paired with danger cues such as aversive noise have demonstrated facilitated processing and enhanced sensory gain in visual cortex. The present study aimed at extending this line of research to the field of social conditioning by pairing neutral face stimuli with affective nonverbal gestures. To this end, electro-cortical processing of faces serving as different conditioned stimuli was investigated in a differential social conditioning paradigm. Behavioral ratings and visually evoked steady-state potentials (ssVEP) were recorded in twenty healthy human participants, who underwent a differential conditioning procedure in which three neutral faces were paired with pictures of negative (raised middle finger), neutral (pointing), or positive (thumbs-up) gestures. As expected, faces associated with the aversive hand gesture (raised middle finger) elicited larger ssVEP amplitudes during conditioning. Moreover, theses faces were rated as to be more arousing and unpleasant. These results suggest that cortical engagement in response to faces aversively conditioned with nonverbal gestures is facilitated in order to establish persistent vigilance for social threat-related cues. This form of social conditioning allows to establish a predictive relationship between social stimuli and motivationally relevant outcomes.     

Development of working memory brain organization in young schoolchildren

In children of 7-8 and 9-10 years old, the ERP components were studied by comparing two non-verbalized visuo-spatial stimuli shown in succession with 1.5-1.8 s interstimulus interval. We found the age-related differences in the specific way (and the extent to which) the cortical areas were involved into the processes of the reference stimulus (the first stimulus in the pair) encoding and into the process of comparing the memory trace against the test stimulus. In both age groups, the sensory-specific N1 ERP component in the visual cortices had larger amplitude during working memory than during free observation. Age-related differences in the processing of the sensory-specific parameters of a stimulus are most pronounced in ERP to the test stimulus: in children of 9-10, the amplitude of N1 component increased significantly in all caudal leads following the earlier increase in P1 component in the inferior temporal and occipital areas. In the children of that age, unlike children of 7-8, the early involvement of ventro-lateral prefrontal cortex becomes apparent. In that area an increase of positivity confined to 100-200 ms post-stimulus is observed. Substantial inter-group differences are observed in the late ERP components that are related to cognitive operations. In children of 7-8, presenting both reference and test stimuli causes a significant increase in the amplitude of late positive complex (LPC) in caudal leads with maximal increase being observed in parietal areas at 300-800 ms post-stimulus. In children of 9-10, one can see some adult-like features of the late ERP components during different stages of the working memory process: in fronto-central areas N400 component increases in response to the reference stimulus, whereas LPC increases in response to the test stimulus. The data reported in this work show that the almost mature functional organization of working memory is already in place at the age of 9-10. However, the extent of the prefrontal cortex (especially its dorsal areas) involvement does not yet match the level of maturity.     

Determinants of tonic and phasic reactions in transswitching

Forty-eight college students were assigned randomly to four groups in a 2 X 2 factorial arrangement of phasic conditional stimuli (same vs. different) and tonic conditional stimuli (same vs. different) to receive 2 days of classical conditioning with a transswitching procedure. Tonic stimuli were a 5-minute projected white triangle or circle; phasic stimuli were a 5-second red or green square superimposed over the tonic stimuli. There were six tonic stimulus segments each day, separated by 20-second periods of no stimulus, three containing six trials of the phasic stimulus paired with shock and three containing six trials of the phasic stimulus alone, in the counterbalanced order. Tonic responding at the onset of the tonic stimuli or during brief periods following its onset were recorded, along with phasic responses to the phasic stimuli. Responses included magnitude of skin conductance responses, frequency of unelicited skin conductance responses, and tonic heart rate. Both skin conductance measures of responding to the tonic stimuli differentiated significantly between positive and negative tonic segments during Day 2, but only in the group with two different tonic stimuli and one phasic stimulus ("standard" transswitching). This supported the hypothesis that tonic stimulus differentiation would be absent when two different phasic stimuli were present. The heart rate data did not support this hypothesis, showing tonic differentiation in both groups with two tonic stimuli. Phasic differentiation controlled by the different phasic stimuli was observed on Day 1; on Day 2, phasic differentiation was present only in the group with two tonic and one phasic stimuli and the group with one tonic and two phasic stimuli.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

Remote Safety Monitoring for Elderly Persons Based on Omni-Vision Analysis

Remote monitoring service for elderly persons is important as the aged populations in most developed countries continue growing. To monitor the safety and health of the elderly population, we propose a novel omni-directional vision sensor based system, which can detect and track object motion, recognize human posture, and analyze human behavior automatically. In this work, we have made the following contributions: (1) we develop a remote safety monitoring system which can provide real-time and automatic health care for the elderly persons and (2) we design a novel motion history or energy images based algorithm for motion object tracking. Our system can accurately and efficiently collect, analyze, and transfer elderly activity information and provide health care in real-time. Experimental results show that our technique can improve the data analysis efficiency by 58.5% for object tracking. Moreover, for the human posture recognition application, the success rate can reach 98.6% on average.