To our knowledge, Mizuno et al. (1970) and Bell and Fox (1997) have been the only individuals to study motor development and EEG power simultaneously. Although Mizuno et al. (1970) did not explicitly seek to investigate coaction between motor experience and power, their longitudinal study found that infants’ ability to hold up their head, sit, stand and walk was accompanied by increased power measured from the occipital region within the 7.17 to 10.30 frequency. Bell and Fox (1997) investigated individual differences at 8 months in crawling, object permanence, and frontal power within the 6–9 Hz band. Eight-month-olds with 1–4 weeks of crawling experience had significantly greater power at medial frontal, lateral frontal, and parietal regions at baseline, compared to pre-locomotor infants or infants with >4 weeks of crawling (Bell and Fox, 1997; object permanence results discussed in the “Cognitive Development” section). Greater power may indicate increased synchrony or coordination of neural activity within a region, which could reflect increased regional maturation and organization (Nunez, 1981; Bell and Fox, 1992). Increased power in frontal and parietal regions may indicate that onset of crawling is related to a greater need for novice crawlers to recruit these regions for motor planning.
