The overall purpose of the Workshop is to highlight the brain plasticity and its capacity to adapt to normal and perturbed developmental conditions. Within this framework, the workshop will explore more recent scientific discoveries on brain mechanisms supporting the interactive, motor and social processes of infant development. In particular, the knowledge of the active role of the motor system in supporting social and cognitive functions has fostered research in the field of early motor and social experience and its clinical implications. The risk factors and short/long-term effects of specific sensorimotor and social experiences will be evaluated in order to understand the potentials and limits of brain plasticity and by means of human and animal models. The presence of sensitive periods in development, but also of the brain plasticity potential in early development is key for our understanding of the appropriate type of interventions and neurorehabilitative tools required to overcome the adverse effects of neonatal brain lesions, perturbed early social experiences or genetic vulnerability. The workshop is highly integrative and interdisciplinary. The presentations will be appropriate for a broad audience consisting of scholars from multiple disciplines, representing different levels of seniority (e.g., graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, junior and senior researchers). Issues covered by the Workshop will include:

• Early mother-infant interactions
• Social and motor development
• Early brain injury
• Epigenetic regulation
• Effects of early experience and adversity on brain development
• Animal models for brain development
• Interventions and neurorehabilitation
• Autism and impairments in social communication
• Cultural diversity in human development