Speaker
Description
When we observe freely moving newborns, we may notice that, among their spontaneous movements, self-directed ones are the most frequent. Influential accounts have pioneeringly hypothesized that early self-exploratory movements may hold a significant evolutionary meaning, by fostering the emergence of a primitive bodily-self representation (Rochat et al., 2001). Indeed, self-directed movements may allow the observation of multisensory contingencies converging on one's own body, thus being at the origin of an early sense of self. Against this background, I will present a series of studies conducted in newborns (9-65 hours old) in which we aimed (1) to quantify the neonatal engagement in self-directed behavior and (2) to verify whether multisensory integration is enhanced following self- then externally-directed movements at birth. Specifically, we recorded (1) the newborns’ kinematics during spontaneous movement and (2) their EEG responses to unimodal (tactile and auditory) and multimodal (audio-tactile) stimuli delivered after self- or externally-directed movements. Interestingly, kinematic data reveal a significantly greater proportion of self- than externally-directed movements, especially targeting the trunk. Crucially, EEG results show significantly greater superadditive responses (i.e., with enhanced ERP amplitude in bimodal than unimodal) following self- as compared to externally-directed movements. These converging kinematic and electrophysiological findings pinpoint the importance of bodily-targeted motor behaviour early in life, since it promotes intermodal perception. In conclusion, our results endorse self-directed behaviour as a crucial context fostering the emergence of bodily-self representation in early typical development, thus laying the groundwork for investigating its possible alteration in atypical development.
| If you're submitting a symposium talk, what's the symposium title? | The Body Across the Lifespan: How Body Representation Is Shaped from Infancy to Old Age |
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| If you're submitting a symposium, or a talk that is part of a symposium, is this a junior symposium? | Yes |
