The First Eight Months

This podcast documents an extraordinary experiment revealing how the way infants wriggle, from birth, helps prepare their brains and bodies to navigate a complex physical and social world. This podcast is for anyone interested in how social and communication skills emerge over the first years of life and explores if the quality of a baby’s first movements can act as an early detection system for neurodevelopmental conditions like autism.

Recommended Sources:

BBC Reels:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/reel/video/p0ggy0fn/how-i-rewired-my-brain-in-six-weeks

University of Sussex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDnPhP-gPuY

Newsweek: https://www.newsweek.com/baby-movements-predict-neurodivergence-1920020

Me Human website: www.mehuman.io

Prof Gilly Forrester media: www.gillianforrester.com

Prof Gilly Forrester, University of Sussex: https://profiles.sussex.ac.uk/p170236-gillian-forrester/about

Publications about this project:

• Sotoodeh, S., Ossmy, O., Hall, J., Rowan, H, Donati, G., Forrester, G.S. (in press). Automatic Pose Estimation in Newborn Infants: Lessons from the Baby Grow Study, Behavior Research Methods

• Ossmy, O., Rowan, H., Sotoodeh, S., Hall, J., Donati, G., Forrester, G.S. (2025). Frequent, Scalable and Global Use of “Intelligent Onesies” to Quantify Newborns’ Spontaneous Movements in Natural Settings, 54, IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL), Prague.

https://sussex.figshare.com/articles/conference_contribution/Frequent_scalable_and_global_use_of_intelligentonesies_to_quantify_newborns_spontaneous_movements_in_natural_settings/31035037?file=60899593

• Ossmy O, Donati G, Kaur A, Sotoodeh MS, Forrester GS (2025) Towards automatic assessment of atypical early motor development? Brain Research Bulletin,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainresbull.2025.111311

Acknowledgments

This podcast episode was written and presented by Gilly Forrester, produced by Will Hood of The Academic Podcast Agency, funded by the Simons Foundation and with support from the University of Sussex.

Do you identify as an upright, walking, talking tool using Great Ape? Well, like it or not, you are. My name is Gilly Forrester. I'm a professor of comparative cognition, and this podcast channel will be featuring some of the many research projects I'm involved in. I'm proud of my ape identity because it's a unique window into who we are as human beings. And I really want to understand how our bodies and our brains work together to allow us to think, feel, act the way that we do.

A big part of understanding who we are requires that we appreciate a shared evolutionary history with other apes. This has led to the inheritance of much of our modern skills and cultural traits. Me Human challenges everyone to consider humans within this evolutionary framework, from infancy to adulthood, and asks these fundamental questions about who we are as human apes.

So thank you for listening. Be sure to check out the individual episode show notes for more resources on any of the subjects we cover. And I hope you enjoy the Me Human podcast.

Me, Human Website: https://www.mehuman.io/

Me, Human Music by Edie Blue