Full title: The Embodied Brain Model for Understanding Early Human Development

Abstract: Early human development has the nature of spontaneous exploration and
boot-strap learning, leading to open-ended acquisition of complex and flexible
motor behaviors. Despite accumulating evidence supporting the importance of
sensorimotor experience in neurodevelopment as early as the fetal period, the
early developmental mechanisms remain unclear. However, investigating causal
links between sensorimotor experience and cortical learning is particularly
challenging in human fetuses owing to technical and ethical difficulties.
Therefore, computational approaches based on comprehensive biological data about
the nervous system, body, and environment have been developed to probe
mechanisms underlying early functional brain development. We have developed an
embodied approach focusing on interactions among brain, body, and environment
that offers opportunities to explore relations between functional neural
development and sensorimotor experience.