Tag : Spontaneous

Washington: According to new research led by the University of Tokyo, spontaneous, random baby movements aid the development of their sensorimotor system. Detailed motion capture of newborns and infants was combined with a musculoskeletal computer model, to enable researchers to analyze communication among muscles and sensations across the whole body. Researchers found patterns of muscle interaction developing based on the babies' random exploratory behaviour, that would later enable them to perform sequential movements as infants. A better understanding of how our sensorimotor system develops could help us gain insight into the origin of human movement as well as earlier diagnoses of developmental disorders. If you've spent time with a baby, you'll probably have noticed that they hardly keep still. Right from birth -- and even in the womb -- babies start to kick, wiggle and move seemingly without aim or external stimulation. These are called "spontaneous movements" and researchers believe that they have an important role to play in the development of the sensorimotor system, i.e., our ability to control our muscles, movement and coordination. Suppose we can better understand these seemingly random movements and how they are involved in early human development. In that case, we might also be able to identify early indicators for certain developmental disorders, such as cerebral palsy. Currently, there is limited knowledge about how newborns and infants learn to move their body. "Previous research into sensorimotor development has focused on kinematic properties, muscle activities which cause movement in a joint or a part of the body," said Project Assistant Professor Hoshinori Kanazawa from the Graduate School of Information Scien ...