Me, Human

The Academic Podcast Agency

Do you identify as an upright, walking, talking tool using Great Ape? Well, like it or not, you are. My name is Gilly Forrester. I'm a professor of comparative cognition, and this podcast channel will be featuring some of the many research projects I'm involved in. I'm proud of my ape identity because it's a unique window into who we are as human beings. And I really want to understand how our bodies and our brains work together to allow us to think, feel, act the way that we do. A big part of understanding who we are requires that we appreciate a shared evolutionary history with other apes. This has led to the inheritance of much of our modern skills and cultural traits. Me Human challenges everyone to consider humans within this evolutionary framework, from infancy to adulthood, and asks these fundamental questions about who we are as human apes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episodes

  1. Apr 4

    The Baby Grow Project: Part 1

    The First Eight Months This podcast documents an extraordinary experiment revealing how the way infants wriggle, from birth, helps prepare their brains and bodies to navigate a complex physical and social world. This podcast is for anyone interested in how social and communication skills emerge over the first years of life and explores if the quality of a baby’s first movements can act as an early detection system for neurodevelopmental conditions like autism. Recommended Sources: BBC Reels:https://www.bbc.co.uk/reel/video/p0ggy0fn/how-i-rewired-my-brain-in-six-weeks University of Sussex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDnPhP-gPuY Newsweek: https://www.newsweek.com/baby-movements-predict-neurodivergence-1920020 Me Human website: www.mehuman.io Prof Gilly Forrester media: www.gillianforrester.com Prof Gilly Forrester, University of Sussex: https://profiles.sussex.ac.uk/p170236-gillian-forrester/about Publications about this project: Sotoodeh, S., Ossmy, O., Hall, J., Rowan, H, Donati, G., Forrester, G.S. (in press). Automatic Pose Estimation in Newborn Infants: Lessons from the Baby Grow Study, Behavior Research Methods Ossmy, O., Rowan, H., Sotoodeh, S., Hall, J., Donati, G., Forrester, G.S. (2025). Frequent, Scalable and Global Use of “Intelligent Onesies” to Quantify Newborns’ Spontaneous Movements in Natural Settings, 54, IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL), Prague. https://sussex.figshare.com/articles/conference_contribution/Frequent_scalable_and_global_use_of_intelligentonesies_to_quantify_newborns_spontaneous_movements_in_natural_settings/31035037?file=60899593 Ossmy O, Donati G, Kaur A, Sotoodeh MS, Forrester GS (2025) Towards automatic assessment of atypical early motor development? Brain Research Bulletin, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainresbull.2025.111311 Acknowledgments: This podcast episode was written and presented by Gilly Forrester, produced by Will Hood of The Academic Podcast Agency, funded by the Simons Foundation and with support from the University of Sussex. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    The Baby Grow Project: Part 1

About

Do you identify as an upright, walking, talking tool using Great Ape? Well, like it or not, you are. My name is Gilly Forrester. I'm a professor of comparative cognition, and this podcast channel will be featuring some of the many research projects I'm involved in. I'm proud of my ape identity because it's a unique window into who we are as human beings. And I really want to understand how our bodies and our brains work together to allow us to think, feel, act the way that we do. A big part of understanding who we are requires that we appreciate a shared evolutionary history with other apes. This has led to the inheritance of much of our modern skills and cultural traits. Me Human challenges everyone to consider humans within this evolutionary framework, from infancy to adulthood, and asks these fundamental questions about who we are as human apes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.