Five things to know about early childhood brain development
There has been an explosion of research over the past decade that shows how important the first few years of a child’s life are in terms of brain development. To help us make sense of how those early experience can shape a child’s brain, we called up Dr. Jack Shonkoff, director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University.
1. And you thought you were busy...
"I think what’s most important for people to understand is that a newborn at birth has most of the brain cells that we will have for our entire life, but relatively little of the connections, the circuits among the different cells," explains Shonkoff.
"What happens very, very rapidly is that the brain is building connections, it’s building synapses," says Shonkoff. How many connections? Glad you asked. A baby forms 700 new neural connections per second in the first years of life. "This process of building the architecture of the brain," says Shonkoff "is dramatically influence by life experiences. It is not genetically hardwired. Literally our environment shapes the architecture of our brain in the first year of life."
2. Serve and return interactions
Shonkoff says an infant's brain is dependent on responsiveness from adults. So all those adorable things that babies do right from the beginning -- coos, gurgles, sounds and smiles -- how an adult responds to those coos and gurgles help shape the brain circuitry. Shonkoff calls these moments "Serve and Return interactions." The baby does something, the adult responds back. Vice versa. "And it's the back and forth, the responsiveness, that shapes the brain circuits."
http://stateofopportunity.michiganradio.org/post/five-things-know-about-early-childhood-brain-development
1. And you thought you were busy...
"I think what’s most important for people to understand is that a newborn at birth has most of the brain cells that we will have for our entire life, but relatively little of the connections, the circuits among the different cells," explains Shonkoff.
"What happens very, very rapidly is that the brain is building connections, it’s building synapses," says Shonkoff. How many connections? Glad you asked. A baby forms 700 new neural connections per second in the first years of life. "This process of building the architecture of the brain," says Shonkoff "is dramatically influence by life experiences. It is not genetically hardwired. Literally our environment shapes the architecture of our brain in the first year of life."
2. Serve and return interactions
Shonkoff says an infant's brain is dependent on responsiveness from adults. So all those adorable things that babies do right from the beginning -- coos, gurgles, sounds and smiles -- how an adult responds to those coos and gurgles help shape the brain circuitry. Shonkoff calls these moments "Serve and Return interactions." The baby does something, the adult responds back. Vice versa. "And it's the back and forth, the responsiveness, that shapes the brain circuits."
http://stateofopportunity.michiganradio.org/post/five-things-know-about-early-childhood-brain-development
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