Toward an integrated biomimetic model of reaching

One of the most influential principles of motor development theory, the circular-reaction hypothesis, states that infants perform exploratory movements to acquire efferent-reafferent associations later used to perform goal directed behavior. All models proposed so far to specify this principle lack biological plausibility under some respects. This work proposes a model that starts to overcome these limitations. In particular, the model aims to show that overcoming such limitations in an integrated fashion can shed new light on so-far overlooked phenomena of motor development. This goal is pursed by showing how the model develops biologically plausible connections and movement smoothing mechanisms as emergent outcomes of the interplay between its various biologically-plausible features: a dynamic arm with realistic parameters, an equilibrium-point muscle model, a leaky-neuron neural controller based on population codes, and a Hebb learning rule.