HSE Researchers Show How Congenital Motor Disorders Affect Brain Development
Researchers from HSE University’s Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience have synthesised the findings of their previous studies on brain development in children with obstetric brachial plexus palsy and arthrogryposis. Their analysis shows that impaired motor function in early childhood not only limits children’s motor experience but also affects memory, categorical thinking, and information processing. The study has been published in Frontiers in Psychology.
During the first years of life, children actively explore the world through movement: they pick up objects, investigate their shapes and properties, and learn to interact with their surroundings. Contemporary theories of embodied cognition suggest that this sensorimotor experience provides the foundation for the development of language, memory, and thinking. However, testing this hypothesis is challenging, as it requires analysing cases in which mobility is impaired or restricted from birth.
HSE researchers have synthesised data collected over five years of working with children with obstetric brachial plexus palsy and arthrogryposis—conditions in which arm movements are restricted from birth or even before birth. Although the conditions have different aetiologies (obstetric brachial plexus palsy is caused by birth trauma, while arthrogryposis is a systemic disorder that restricts movement before birth), they provide an opportunity to investigate how a lack of motor experience affects the development of cognitive functions and the brain. The review incorporates data from behavioural experiments, neuropsychological tests, electroencephalography (EEG), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) conducted by the authors as part of their previous research.
The findings revealed that the consequences of congenital motor disorders extend beyond the motor domain. Behavioural tests showed that the children performed less well on tasks involving action-related words and experienced difficulties with word retrieval and establishing semantic associations between objects and actions. For example, they struggled to establish a connection between pictures depicting the action ‘turn on the light’ and a light bulb. At the same time, the researchers found no differences between the children and their typically developing peers in tasks assessing general vocabulary and grammatical skills. This suggests not a general decline in cognitive abilities, but rather a reorganisation of specific information-processing mechanisms. A lack of motor experience selectively affects the formation of mental representations of actions and objects with which we interact using our hands.
The researchers also identified difficulties affecting other cognitive functions. EEG showed that the brains of children with motor impairments process words associated with hand movements differently at an automatic level. The children also had lower scores on tests of auditory and visual working memory. These findings are reflected in structural changes in the brain: MRI revealed structural differences, including a reduction in grey matter volume in the anterior regions of the hippocampus, which plays an important role in memory formation, as well as changes in areas associated with executive functions.
The differences were particularly pronounced in children aged 8–11. This is a period when the hippocampus undergoes a crucial stage of structural and functional maturation. The brain actively eliminates unnecessary connections while strengthening important neural pathways. As a result, memory retrieval becomes faster and more accurate. If the brain does not receive sufficient sensorimotor stimulation during this period, the window for development closes, and the consequences may be irreversible.
The authors emphasise that the development of thinking cannot be considered separately from the body's interaction with its environment.
Dzerassa Kadieva
‘Children with early motor impairments may need not only orthopaedic care and motor rehabilitation, but also support for their cognitive and speech development. The earlier we help a child interact fully with the world around them, the greater the chances that their memory, attention, thinking, and executive functions will develop properly,’ explained Dzerassa Kadieva, the paper’s first author and Junior Research Fellow at the HSE Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience.
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