Explaining neonate facial imitation from the sensory alignment in the superior colliculus

Abstract

We propose a developmental scenario for explaining neonatal imitation. We hypothesize that the early maturation of the superior colliculus (SC) at the fetal period may strongly contribute to the construction of the social brain. We underly two mechanisms in SC potentially important which are (1) spatial topological organization of the unisensory modalities and (2) the conformed sensory alignment between these different modalities. We make a neural model of SC learning from a fetus facial tissues and from the fetus eyes and we show preference for facelike patterns.