In pursuit of artificial intelligence with a human mind UTokyo Research

Building upon his success in getting a humanoid robot to perform an action he was aiming for, Kuniyoshi has now turned his attention to how fetuses develop intelligence to explore the fundamental principles of intelligence of our species. For his studies, Kuniyoshi has modeled a virtual fetus consisting of approximately 400 muscles and a skeleton, gestating in an environment resembling a womb filled with amniotic fluid to run computer simulations. This fetus does not possess "innate behaviors," namely a pre-existing process that spawns specific movements. However, when vibrations sent through neural signals from the spinal cord to random muscles reached the body's other muscles through the skeleton or feedback of pressure from the amniotic fluid and uterine wall, the muscles and corresponding spinal circuits began coordinating their movements, leading to the emergence of actions resembling those of an actual fetus in the womb (movie 4). Recently, Kuniyoshi used a computer model of a fetus in the 32nd week of gestation with cerebral neural circuits, inside the womb of a woman, to observe how the cerebrum receives sensory information and the neural circuits learn about the body through touch and somatic sensation. Furthermore, he compared a fetus that was raised inside the womb with one raised outside it, and found that learning occurring inside the womb led to more enhanced development of neural circuits than that occurring outside it.