Transcript Brain Development During the Early Years

Brain Development During the
Early Years:
Neuroscience and Education
I Early Childhood EIS Conference
Copan, Honduras
March 12-13, 2005
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Brain Development During the Early Years
Agenda
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
How the human brain develops, neurulation,
migration, and connections.
The emergence of the senses plus one.
The brain develops neurological workstations.
Tying the knot with education.
What’s best for children.
Bonus – What’s best for adults.
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The BIG Ideas
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Understanding the brain leads to new insights about
learning.
The brain begins its development days after
conception and continues to make new connections
throughout life.
During the early years there are critical times for the
senses to complete their development.
Parents, educators, and daycare providers can study
what is going on in a child’s brain to make decisions to
support the child’s learning.
Oral language development prepares the brain for
reading.
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What is our job as parents and educators?
It is our job to study information from the science
of neurology so we can:
1.
2.
3.
Interpret information about the macrostructures and
microstructures of the brain for useable conversation
among educators and parents,
Study development of the brain throughout childhood
to understand what is set by nature and what is
possibly influenced through nurture, and
Determine what information is applicable to families
and educators as they care for and educate children.
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1. Understanding the brain leads to
new insights about learning.
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Brain Microstructures
• Neurons develop at the rate of up to 250,000 per minute
during fetal development.
• Neurons are composed of a nucleus and cell body with
one axon and up to 100,000 dendrites (depending on
stimulation).
• Glial cells, assist the neuron firing process when they
become mylinated and they are nursemaids to the
neurons.
• Adult brains have 100 billion neurons and a million billion
connections… that’s one quadrillion!!!
• As much as 83% of the growth of the dendrites and
synapses development occurs after birth.
Elliot 25-27
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Cell Body
Dendrites
Axon
Myelin
Sheath
Terminal Buttons
Direction of
messages
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At three
months of
age a baby’s
dendritic
forests are
already
branching
and growing
based on the
child’s
genetic
program and
on just the
first 12
weeks of his
or her life.
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At birth
the
neurons in
the
cerebral
cortex at
the front
of the
baby’s
brain are
smaller
and have
many
fewer
branches
than they
will a few
weeks
later.
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2. The brain begins its development
days
after
conception
and
continues to make new connections
throughout life.
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During the months of
gestation, the brain
grows with
astonishing speed.
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How the Brain Develops – Startling Facts
•19 days after conception neurulation, development of the brain and
nervous system, is evident.
•At 26 days the embryo has closed the tube running its length that will
become the spinal cord,
•6 weeks reveals the beginnings of the pons and medula in the brain
stem, the cerebrum, thalamus, basal ganglia, limbic system, and
cerebral cortex.
•At 8 weeks and at two inches in length, the baby is now called a fetus
with its human form.
•4 months into the pregnancy the 8 inch fetus has visible fingers and
toes, a four chambered beating heart, and an intact central nervous
system.
•At 6 months the fourteen inch fetus is capable, under dire
circumstances to live outside the womb.
This information is from Elise Eliot, What’s Going on in There? How the
brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life, pp. 15-27
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It is All About Senses for Infants - TOUCH
• Touch is one of the most developed senses at birth.
• Touch sensation runs from the spinal cord to the brain stem
and to the thalamus, then to the somatosensory cortex so
that the baby can feel the touch (pressure, pain, hot, and
cold).
• Many more sensory receptor are located around the face,
especially the mouth, and in the hands and fingers than in
the rest of the body.
• Touch sensitivity develops from a head to toe sequence.
• Touch through massage therapy is used for preterm babies,
and for children of all ages as treatment for asthma,
diabetes, cancer, autism, skin problems, juvenile arthritis,
eating disorders and psychiatric syndromes (Eliot, 143).
• Touching babies is programmed parental behavior, a
natural and loving activity that promotes health and normal
growth.
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Did you know…..
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It is All About Senses for Infants –
VESTIBULAR SYSTEMS
The vestibular system:
• Allows maintenance of head and body posture for body
movement.
• Allows the eyes to keep the visual field during bouncing
and rocking.
• Is housed in the inner ear with the hearing chambers.
• Uses the semi-circular canals to detect head turns and
the otolith to detect linear movements, body position,
and head tilts.
• Relies on maturation for the child’s postural abilities of
vision, proprioceptive and motor skills, sense of balance
not fully mature until age 7 and for some not until
puberty.
• Can be slow to develop and cause delayed motor skills.
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Did you know…..
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It is All About Senses for Infants – SMELL
• A mucus layer inside the nostril with hair like cilia detect
odors and send them to the olfactory bulbs located
underneath the frontal lobe.
• Hedonics, the distinction between good and bad smells
is not completely developed until around 3 years of age.
• The completely developed sense of smell at birth is
important to critical nutritional needs.
• Smell is important to bonding and emotional security.
• Parents and care providers are advised not to change
lotions or soap, not to wash blankets or stuffed animals
unnecessarily, and make the olfactory environment
stable, pleasant, and comforting.
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Did you know…..
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It is All About Senses for Infants – TASTE
• Chemical detectors on the tongue, the roof, soft palate,
and upper throat area detect four categories – sweet,
salty, bitter and sour.
• The tongue alone has about 4,500 taste buds and each
taste bud can have as many as forty taste receptor cells.
• Taste stimulation to the medula activates salivation,
swallowing, and tongue movements.
• Taste information to several limbic systems controls our
motivation to eat and drink.
• The full appreciation of taste is coordinated with the
sense of smell. When smell is blocked up to 90% of the
refined sense of taste can be lost.
• Other factors, such as texture and temperature affect
likes and dislikes for taste.
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It is All About Senses for Infants – VISION
• Vision begins as neurons migrate to the area of the brain
for visual interpretation (set by nature), but complete the
process of forming a refined map of neural wiring
through the very act of seeing (determined by nature).
• Postnatal experiences shape the visual centers of the
brain.
• Depth perception, color vision, fine acuity, and well
controlled eye movement are in place at 6 months.
• The brain’s task is to convert light information into
electrical signals that map out each color and point in a
visual field. Images are a series of dots that are filled in
by the brain to interpret what the object or objects are.
• There are at least 32 different areas of each hemisphere
that are devoted to parallel processing of visual stimuli.
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Did you know…..
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It is All About Senses for Infants – HEARING
• Hearing begins about 12 weeks before birth and at birth baby
has a definite preference for mom’s voice.
• Very young babies show a propensity of interest in the
language spoken in their environment.
• Babies and young children prefer to hear “motherese” the
slower, higher-pitched words with strong intonation that is
used by care-providers.
• Auditory development is impressionable during the preschool
and early grade school years. Experience of different sounds
at a young age influences the ability to discriminate sounds in
older years.
• Potential for hearing loss is prior to and just after the fifteenth
week of gestation.
• Hearing is probably the most important sense for learning, as
experience with language, rhythm, and music stimulate the
brain for intellectual and emotional growth.
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Did you know…..
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TOUCH
SPATIAL
AWARENESS
VISION
SMELL
TASTE
HEARING
COORDINATION
Input from the senses is sent to the thalamus, except the sense of smell.
From the thalamus it is sent to other areas of the brain for interpretation.
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4. Important adults can learn what is
going on in a child’s brain to make
decisions to support the child’s
learning.
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How the Brain Develops
• Childhood experiences are so powerful that they can
completely change the ability of a child to be
successful in school.
Research shows that between ages 3 and 8, a child’s brain can adapt to
any set of conditions by using twice as many neurons, twice as many
connections, and twice as much energy as an adult brain. – Robert Holz,
Science Writer.
4 years
Birth
10-12 years
Glucose Utilization
It is during childhood that the brain builds foundations for:
•Vision and hearing
•Intellectual development
•Language
•Emotional development
•Vocabulary
•Muscle control
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PARENT and FAMILY FACTORS
Leading child development specialists and researchers cite
these qualities for parents who wish to raise a smarter
child:
Books, music tapes, compact discs and toys that are
appropriate to child’s developmental level are available to use.
Father’s involvement with family activities on a daily basis.
Visible signs that the child is recognized as special in the
house, pictures, work samples, special places.
The youngster is included in conversations, with compliments
and celebrations of his/her milestones.
(Ramey and Ramey)
•Birth order is an advantage to the oldest child.
•Working mothers is a complicated and unresolved issue.
•Prenatal experience has a powerful impact on intelligence.
•Nutritional, brain-building food encourages brain growth with
healthy myelin covered neurons, and strong connections among
neuron and brain systems.
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INSTRUCTIONS
DADS PLEASE READ CAREFULLY
BEFORE RAISING
THIS IS A BABY. IT NEEDS YOU.
IT NEEDS YOUR LOVE, YOUR TOUCH,
AND YOUR TIME.
SPEND LOTS OF TIME WITH IT. BUILD
A BIRD HOUSE.
READ A BOOK. GO FOR A WALK. DO
HOMEWORK. PLAY.
THE MORE TIME YOU SPEND, THE
BETTER CHANCE IT
HAS OF GROWING UP HAPPY AND
HEALTHY. IT GROWS
VERY QUICKLY.
PAY ATTENTION.
NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE
DIFFERENCE YOU MAKE.
IT TAKES A MAN TO BE A DAD.
www.fatherhood.org
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What’s Best…
• Opportunity to explore and a great variety of play things to
encourage activity and curiosity.
• Musical keyboard may improve spatial-temporal reasoning
and mathematical thinking. It becomes finger movements,
location, pitch, timing, and aesthetic feedback.
• Responsive, involved, nurturing, and softly demanding
parents.
• Starting school at the age-appropriate time (Eliot).
• Active involvement for the parent with a parenting group
and/or child rearing books.
• Encouragement and exploration.
• Lots of talk with child and recognition of gestures and social
cues.
• Stimulate all the brain’s senses by exposing young children to
different music, objects, colors, textures, smells, sounds,
shapes, and word.
• Experience with problem solving and reasoning, and
development of different motor skills. (Diamond and
Hobson)
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5. Oral language development
prepares the brain for
reading.
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Huge Word Gap in Three Year Olds
Study conducted by Betty Hart, University of Kansas, and Todd R. Risley
University of Alaska, reported in the American Educator, Spring, 2003, 49. Study conducted over 3 years with 42 families with toddlers with
follow-up in third grade.
Key Findings:
86 to 98% of words in children’s vocabulary reflected parents
vocabulary.
By age 3 trends in amount of talk, vocabulary development, style of
interactions well established and greatly impacted for families with low
SES compared to average and high SES.
Indicators for vocabulary use and reading comprehension at grade 3
were predicted at age 3.
During the first three years children are very impressionable and
ultimately dependent upon families for their experiences.
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TV Watching and Attention Problems
Key Points to Consider about TV Viewing
There are many important developments and connections
occurring in the brains of children ages 0-2. The brain is
stimulated by engagement and activity. Watching television
is generally a passive activity.
Parents and care providers can make limited television
and use of carefully selected videos engaging and
stimulating experiences for children three years and older.
Households with children can be monitored by adults for
the use of television to determine what is watched, when,
and why.
Adequate research supports that too much television is
detrimental to the child’s developing brain and that children
do not need exposure to violence from television.
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Neuroethics and Imperfections of the Brain
Why the Human Memory is Notoriously Imperfect
1.
Transience – as time passes recollection retreats, details become less
accurate, if available at all.
2.
Absent-mindedness – falling to pay attention at the time of the event or
activity results in irritating lapses or forgetfulness.
3.
Blocking – temporary inaccessibility of stored information that may be
very well known.
4.
Misattribution – memories that are stored with other ideas or events that
were not in actuality related, but have been connected as if they are.
5.
Suggestibility – implanting memories or ideas through emotion, intensity,
or novelty.
6.
Bias – distortion of what is remembered based upon current information,
beliefs, or values.
7.
Persistence – unwanted recollections that cannot be forgotten.
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Neurobics
Adults can engage in neurobics by changing activities in their
lives that are routine.
•Brush your teeth with your non-dominant hand.
•Sit in a different chair each time you eat.
•Shower with your eyes closed.
•Park in a different spot in the parking lot.
•Buy fresh foods, not those that are pre-packaged.
•Learn new card or social games.
•Work at making new friends.
•Make new family situations.
•Engage in internal jogging – laughter.
•Develop a playful avocation.
•Listen to a new type of music.
•Take a walk in the rain.
Novelty, cognitive dissonance, intensity of stimuli, meaning, and
emotion are ways that focus students’ attention for learning. They can
be a real boost for adults too.
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Lawrence Kats, neurobiologist from Duke University
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The brain is without doubt our most
fascinating organ. Parents, educators, and
society as a whole have a tremendous
power to shape the wrinkly universe inside
each child’s head, and, with it, the kind of
person he or she will turn to be. We owe it
to our children to help them grow the best
brains possible.
Lois Eliot, Ph. D., What is Going on In There?, 1999, p.10
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