Brain Research: Build A Better Brain
Before Birth:
- The Brain Creates Itself:
The physical capability to read must be hard-wired into the brain. While many of the processes are automatic, full development cannot be achieved with excellent caregiving. Three weeks after conception, the unborn baby's brain begins creating itself by producing 15 million nerve cells (neurons) an hour. They organize themselves into 2 cerebral hemispheres and a "neural tube" that will become the spinal column. Bearing specific instructions, they migrate to distant parts of the developing brain and perform specialized functions that will allow later developments to materialize. By the time the unborn baby is 10 weeks old, these neurons are sending pulsating waves of electrical activity which physically create pathways in the mind. The brain shapes itself.
- The Developing Brain:
Bulges in the neural tube become the forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain. The first two sectors govern memory, learning, interpretation, reason, IQ, and personality. The hindbrain governs unconscious functioning like reflexes vision, hearing, posture, and breathing.
By Birth:
The baby's brain contains 100 billion neurons and ten times that many glial ("glue") cells that protect and nourish them. They vary in size, depending on specialization. As few as 8 of the large ones and as many as 160 of the small ones can fit on the period at the end of this sentence. Each neuron will eventually be "wired" to thousands of other neurons.
In this "wiring," each of the billions of neurons sends out long spindly signal-senders (axons) to make connections to the shorter, bushier signal-receivers (dendrites) of other neurons. Axons and dendrites create this "wiring." Axons are spindly signal-senders that reach out toward shorter, bushy dendrites. Sending the electrical impulse across the gap (the synapse) to make the connections between the cells creates the brain's communication structure. The brain makes trillions more of these connections than it can use. The axons can be as short as 1/8th of an inch and as long as 2 inches.
As the neurons create synapses, they begin "firing," (sending electrical impulses) and forming and layering the networks in the brain. The brain first makes the networks that are required for survival (heartbeat, breathing, etc.). These survival functions are controlled by the hindbrain and midbrain.
The Baby's Brain:
When the baby is about 6 months old, the number of connections between the neurons in his or her brain explodes at a phenomenal rate, from approximately 2,500 per neuron to as many as 15,000 per neuron. A 2-year-old's brain contains twice as many synapses and consumes twice as much energy as an adult brain.
Genetics seems to determine the original programming for the number of connections, but the child's sensory experience from that point on controls not only their number but also their size and strength. A caring, stimulating environment literally grows a bigger brain. In a laboratory animal, a neglected brain is 20-30% smaller than normal. Love and activity also increase the brain's weight, number of neural connections, and ultimately its complexity and raw intelligence.
The years from birth to ten are an irreplaceable season for brain development. Vision, hearing, touch, large muscle control, and small muscle skill all develop at the same time as the baby learns to pay attention to the sights and sounds around it, make decisions, and process information. The result is a pattern of connected images, symbols, memories, needs, desires, ideas, and emotions that make him or her into a human being, capable of interacting with others who have the same complex connections.
With each physical stimulation comes an emotional one. The brain stores both. These connections between experience and emotion, researchers feel, let children exercise judgment, connect with the values of their family, understand their communities, and contribute to society.
If a child has excellent neurological equipment, he or she can probably master appropriate developmental tasks even if he or she receives mediocre nurturing. But for those with more marginal abilities, some intellectual and emotional aspects that make us fully human may never develop without excellent care-giving.
Regularly spending 20 pleasant minutes per day in reading, explaining, joking, and questioning physically alters the way a child's brain is wired. And these effects are permanent.
There are "learning windows" for some skills. Children effortlessly absorb the syntactical rules of their primary tongue (or more than one) by age 5 or 6; after that point, they have to memorize and remember rules for forming sentences. Do you see why these preschool years are crucial?
There's more. At about age 10, the brain begins ruthlessly eliminating the less-used synapses. This physiological fact may explain why remediation, which usually starts in the fourth grade, is such hard work and why it is so seldom completely successful. An 18-year-old has the brain he will have for the rest of his life. The shape of his brain's internal pathways is carved out. For better or worse, the child's unique physiology and personality is set.
BUILD A BETTER BRAIN!
READ TO YOUR CHILD!
Sources: J. Madeleine Nash, "Fertile Minds," Time Magazine, Feb. 3, 1997, 50-56; Stanley I. Greenspan, M.D., with Beryl L. Benderly, The Growth of the Mind (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1997).
