Body Maps in Early Infancy: A Foundation for Social Engagement

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From the moment of birth, humans begin to form social relationships with others. These relationships, of course, become increasingly more complex across infancy, childhood, and beyond, but the abilities that support this development likely have their foundations in early infancy. The focus of this research project is on one such ability, infants' recognition that there is a correspondence between their own bodies and those of others (such as recognizing one's own hand as the same body part with the same function as one's parents' hands). This recognition of bodily correspondences requires that infants have a basic sense of the structure of their own bodies despite not being able to see them from the outside. This research investigates how infants' brains are organized to recognize and organize information about their own bodies, how this changes over development, and how it might influence their ability to recognize bodily correspondences with others. This award supports studies in which electroencephalographic (EEG) methods will be used to study the properties of somatotopic body maps in the first weeks and months of life. Specifically, mu rhythm desynchronization and event-related-potential (ERP) responses in one-month-old infants will be measured in response to tactile stimulation of the hands, feet, and lips, with the spatial pattern of these responses being used to chart body maps in the developing human brain. The investigators anticipate that the magnitude and patterning of these brain responses may be modified when the infant is attending to the movements of other people during the periods of tactile stimulation. This will inform how body maps in the infant brain may be part of an early process relating self and other at a bodily level.