Infant’s Primitive Walking Reflex from the Perspective of Learning in the Uterus

Abstract

Recently, researchers have found preterm infants’ walking starts later than term infants, epidemiologically. In previous study, we have discussed about fetal development in uterus from a perspective of learning and self-organization in the uterine environment and hypothesized that the fetal experience affects an infant’s walking ability because fetuses learn reflexive alternating foot stepping relative to primitive walking. We conducted a fetal development simulation and analyzed the foot trajectory by canonical correlation analysis to detect legs’ alternating coordinated movements. The results of the analysis show the appearance of alternating foot movements through the uterine experience. Finally, we conducted primitive walking experiments out of a uterine environment with learned neural connectivity and random neural connectivity. In conclusion, the behavior such as primitive walking is acquired through uterine experience in the simulation and we show the possibility that uterine experience contributes to walking development after birth.