Motor development has profound consequences on perception in infants, including action understanding, mental rotation and proprioception around the first birthday. First evidence shows that motor development around the age when infants start walking, has effects on their spatial memory. However, the neural correlates on this developmental change around the end of first year have not yet been investigated.

The present study combines motor development tasks, MRI assessment and a behavioral spatial navigational task to address this knowledge gap. Fine and gross motor capacities were tested at 12 months of age (N=30) using age-specific tasks from Bayley’s III scale. Spatial navigation was tested with a “hide-n-seek" task inspired by the Morris water maze. In a separate MRI session at 13 months, T1 images of infant brain were collected to measure volumes of specific regions of interest, namely, primary motor areas, premotor areas, supplementary motor areas, anterior hippocampus and parieto-insular vestibular cortex.

I will present results with regards to the hypothesis that motor capacities of infants at 12 months affect their spatial navigational abilities and that this effect is mediated by increased volumes in brain regions associated with spatial navigation.

This study will be the first to investigate a link between infants’ motor skills and early spatial navigation and provide a better understanding of the neural underpinnings of motor developmental milestones and its consequences on the domain of spatial cognition. This study thus further contributes to a deeper comprehension of how motor milestones shape cognitive development during infancy.