Work

Helpless infants are learning a foundation model

Year: 2024

Type: review

Abstract: Humans have a protracted postnatal helplessness period, typically attributed to human-specific maternal constraints causing an early birth when the brain is highly immature. By aligning neurodevelopmental events across species, however, it has been found that humans are not born with especially immature brains compared with animal species with a shorter helpless period. Consistent with this, the rapidly growing field of infant neuroimaging has found that brain connectivity and functional activation at birth share many similarities with the mature brain. Inspired by machine learning, where deep neural networks also benefit from a 'helpless period' of pre-training, we propose that human infants are learning a foundation model: a set of fundamental representations that underpin later cognition with high performance and rapid generalisation.

Source: Trends in Cognitive Sciences

DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2024.05.001

Authors: Rhodri Cusack, Marc’Aurelio Ranzato, Christine J. Charvet

Institutions: Trinity College Dublin, Google DeepMind (United Kingdom), Auburn University

Language: English

Topic: Child and Animal Learning Development

Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $7,030

Funders: European Research Council, H2020 European Research Council