Weiyong Xu was born in Taizhou, China. He went to Xi’an Jiaotong University as an undergraduate student majoring in biomedical engineering. After that, he continued his study as a master student at the department of Life science and technology. His master thesis was focused on the functional connectivity and complex network analysis of the aging brain. He had gained some experience in EEG signal acquisition and EEG signal processing during his master study. He heard about ChildBrain project from Prof. Cong shortly before receiving his Master’s degree. Currently he is working as a doctoral student at the department of psychology, University of Jyvaskyla.

Learning processes are central to skills acquisition during brain development. It is especially important for children and adolescents as their brains undergo significant changes through sensory learning to acquire language (such as reading) and motor skills.
Sensory learning, according to the functional definition provided by Gibson (1969) in her influential textbook, refers to an increase in the ability to extract information from the environment, as a result of experience and practice with stimulation coming from it. The last decade has seen a spectacular scientific interest and advances in our understanding in the process and applications of sensory learning. However, the issue concerning with the neurophysiological mechanisms that underpin sensory learning still remains poorly understood.
Sensory learning can also be linked to the ability of learning language that is essential to children’s communication and interaction with the society.
Very early in infancy we are proficient in understanding spoken language. We readily perceive speech in meaningful units of words and syllables and discriminate even the short transient changes in formants separating stop consonants. This is accomplished partly by the aid of visual cues from the speaker. The lip movements seen during speech activate auditory cortex and other language areas that are active also during listening to speech. Thus there seems to be audio-visual integration occurring for spoken language that starts very early in development.
Of particular interest is how the connection between the oral language and visual language areas are formed during reading acquisition. It has been proposed that human sensory cortex is not hard wired, but adapts to sensory experience which is crucial for brain plasticity. The cellular basis for cortical plasticity involves a combination of functional and structural changes in cortical neurons and the connections between them. Therefore, isolating the developmental paths of brain connectivity will shed light on how we learn to read and the connectivity changes of reading disorders.
In this ESR project brain plasticity related to learning of new speech sounds and identifying novel visual items is examined in children. The main methods used will be electroencephalogram (EEG) and magnetoencephalogram (MEG). Data analyses are carried out in collaboration with the methods experts of the ChildBrain consortium.