Yasunori Yamada

Neural-body coupling for emergent locomotion: A musculoskeletal quadruped robot with spinobulbar model

To gain a synthetic understanding of how the body and nervous system co-create animal locomotion, we propose an investigation into a quadruped musculoskeletal robot with biologically realistic morphology and a nervous system. The muscle configuration and sensory feedback of our robot are compatible with the mono- and bi-articular muscles of a quadruped animal and with its muscle spindles and Golgi tendon organs. The nervous system is designed with a biologically plausible model of the spinobulbar system with no pre-defined gait patterns such that mutual entrainment is dynamically created by exploiting the physics of the body. In computer simulations, we found that designing the body and the nervous system of the robot with the characteristics of biological systems increases information regularities in sensorimotor flows by generating complex and coordinated motor patterns. Furthermore, we found similar results in robot experiments with the generation of various coordinated locomotion patterns created in a self-organized manner. Our results demonstrate that the dynamical interaction between the physics of the body with the neural dynamics can shape behavioral patterns for adaptive locomotion in an autonomous fashion.

Embodiment guides motor and spinal circuit development in vertebrate embryo and fetus

We investigated whether motor and spinal circuit development in vertebrates can be accounted for by the properties underlying embodiment. We ran computer simulations of zebrafish embryo, canine and human fetus models with biologically plausible musculoskeletal bodies and spinal neural network, and quantitatively characterized their embodiments and movements by analyzing inter-muscle connectivities. In computer simulations in the human and canine fetus models, we found that development of the embodiment causes changes in movements and increases their complexity, corresponding to the same manner as mammalian motor development. Further, we showed that interaction with the environment as structured by the embodiment can drive the self-organization of the spinal circuit and trigger important developmental motor transitions, which engender coordinated side-to-side alternating movements in the zebrafish embryo model and left-right alternation of the legs in the human fetus model. Our results suggest that embodiment possesses a multitude of regularities that can guide early development.

An Embodied Brain Model of the Human Foetus

Cortical learning via sensorimotor experiences evoked by bodily movements begins as early as the foetal period. However, the learning mechanisms by which sensorimotor experiences guide cortical learning remain unknown owing to technical and ethical difficulties. To bridge this gap, we present an embodied brain model of a human foetus as a coupled brain-body-environment system by integrating anatomical/physiological data. Using this model, we show how intrauterine sensorimotor experiences related to bodily movements induce specific statistical regularities in somatosensory feedback that facilitate cortical learning of body representations and subsequent visual-somatosensory integration. We also show how extrauterine sensorimotor experiences affect these processes. Our embodied brain model can provide a novel computational approach to the mechanistic understanding of cortical learning based on sensorimotor experiences mediated by complex interactions between the body, environment and nervous system.

Molecular orbital calculation of Mössbauer parameters for Sn(CH3)nH4−n (n=0, 1, 2, 3) and their photoproducts in low temperature matrices

Mössbauer parameters of tin compounds, Sn(CH3)2H4−n (n=0, 1, 2, 3, 4), isolated in low temperature matrices were related to electronic properties at the tin nuclei obtained by molecular orbital calculations. Structures of novel species, Sn(CH3)2 and Sn(CH3)H, produced via photodissociation of matrix-isolated Sn(CH3)3H and Sn(CH3)2H2, respectively, were determined on the basis of molecular orbital calculations as compared with Mössbauer parameters. The correlations between Mössbauer quadrupole splitting and calculated electric field gradient using STO-3G or MINI-4 were found to depend on the valence of tin atoms because of poor allowance for basis sets in describing highly polar molecules.