ZERO TO THREE BrainWonders - The Diigo Meta page

• 26 Nov 06
  

  Christina ren

  baby

  • By most measures of sensory and cognitive development, girls    are slightly more advanced: vision, hearing, memory, smell, and touch are    all more acute in female than male infants. Girl babies also tend to be somewhat    more socially-attuned--responding more readily to human voices or faces, or    crying more vigorously in response to another infant's cry--and they generally    lead boys in the emergence of fine motor and language skills.
  • males of all    ages tend to have slightly larger brains, on average, than females, even after    correcting for differences in body size.
  • By three months of age, boys' and girls' brains respond differently to the    sound of human speech. Because they appear so early in life, such differences    are presumably a product of sex-related genes or hormones.
  • Men's brains    tend to be more lateralized--that is, the two hemispheres operate more    independently during specific mental tasks like speaking or navigating around    one's environment. For the same kinds of tasks, females tend to use both their    cerebral hemispheres more equally.
  • The human brain takes    time to develop, so nature has insured that the neural circuits responsible    for the most vital bodily functions--breathing, heartbeat, circulation, sleeping,    sucking, and swallowing--are up and running by the time a baby emerges from    the protective womb. The rest of brain development can follow at a more leisurely    pace, maximizing the opportunity for a baby's experience and environment to    shape his emerging mind
  • The lower brain is therefore    largely in control of a newborn's behavior: all of that kicking, grasping,    crying, sleeping, rooting, and feeding are functions of the brain stem and    spinal cord.
  • By birth, only the    lower portions of the nervous system (the spinal cord and brain stem) are    very well developed, whereas the higher regions (the limbic system and cerebral    cortex) are still rather primitive.
  • the brain of a newborn baby is    still very much a work-in-progress. It is small--little more than one-quarter    of its adult size
  • Every experience--whether it is seeing one's first    rainbow, riding a bicycle, reading a book, sharing a joke--excites certain    neural circuits and leaves others inactive.
  • Brain development    is "activity-dependent,
  • Generally speaking, genes are responsible for the basic wiring plan--for    forming all of the cells (neurons) and general connections between different    brain regions--while experience is responsible for fine-tuning those connections,    helping each child adapt to the particular environment (geographical, cultural,    family, school, peer-group) to which he belongs.
  • This plasticity has both    a positive and a negative side. On the positive side, it means that young children's    brains are more open to learning and enriching influences. On the negative side,    it also means that young children's brains are more vulnerable to developmental    problems should their environment prove especially impoverished or un-nurturing.
  • The major difference between brain development in a child versus learning an    adult is a matter of degree: the brain is far more impressionable (neuroscientists    use the term plastic) in early life than in maturity.

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