ReviewTrends in cognitive sciences2023
Protracted development of motor cortex constrains rich interpretations of infant cognition.
Review in Trends in cognitive sciences, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
30 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Genome-wide association meta-analysis of age at onset of walking in over 70,000 infants of European ancestry.Nature human behaviour · 2025Pooled it
- Perceptual and conceptual novelty independently guide infant looking behaviour: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Nature human behaviour · 2024Pooled it
- Functional brain connectivity from the fetal period through infancy: A narrative review of resting-state fMRI studies.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Review
- Twitching in sleeping premature infants provides a sensitive behavioral assay of early motor control.iScience · 2026Article
- Infants have rich visual categories in ventrotemporal cortex at 2 months of age.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- Twitching in sleeping premature infants provides a sensitive behavioral assay of early motor control.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Affect before diagnosis: applying affective neuroscience to psychiatry.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- A transient feature of the inferior olive supports the development of cerebellar internal models.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Throwing like a girl: a critique of past approaches and an illustrated proposal for a path forward.Biology of sex differences · 2025Review
- Development and validation of the motor measures in the NIH Baby Toolbox®.Infant behavior & development · 2025Article
- A hierarchical model of early brain functional network development.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2025Review
- Continuous monitoring and machine vision reveals that developing gerbils exhibit structured social behaviors prior to the emergence of autonomy.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- White-Matter Connectivity and General Movements in Infants with Perinatal Brain Injury.Brain sciences · 2025Article
- Disrupted visual attention relates to cognitive development in infants with Neurofibromatosis Type 1.Journal of neurodevelopmental disorders · 2025Article
- Muscle responses to limb block during spontaneous movements in infants.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2025Article
- Recognizability and timing of infant vocalizations relate to fluctuations in heart rate.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- More Than a Small Brain: The Importance of Studying Neural Function during Development.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024Review
- Reexamining developmental continuity and discontinuity in the 21st century: Better aligning behaviors, functions, and mechanisms.Developmental psychology · 2024Review
- Developmentally stable representations of naturalistic image structure in macaque visual cortex.Cell reports · 2024Article
- What we don't know about what babies know: Reconsidering psychophysics, exploration, and infant behavior.The Behavioral and brain sciences · 2024Article
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Abstract
Cognition in preverbal human infants must be inferred from overt motor behaviors such as gaze shifts, head turns, or reaching for objects. However, infant mammals - including human infants - show protracted postnatal development of cortical motor outflow. Cortical control of eye, face, head, and limb movements is absent at birth and slowly emerges over the first postnatal year and beyond. Accordingly, the neonatal cortex in humans cannot generate the motor behaviors routinely used to support inferences about infants' cognitive abilities, and thus claims of developmental continuity between infant and adult cognition are suspect. Recognition of the protracted development of motor cortex should temper rich interpretations of infant cognition and motivate more serious consideration of the role of subcortical mechanisms in early cognitive development.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.