Our Babies and their Brains

    Neuroscience has made some truly amazing discoveries in our recent history. One of the most interesting areas of study is that of  brain development of babies and young children. It used to be the common belief that children were all born as empty slates and it was up to us as parents and teachers to "fill them up". Recent study is beginning to teach us otherwise.
    Essentially, each of our brains are filled with networks of connections somewhat like a connect-the-dot picture, called neural pathways. Our babies are all born with the basic grid to get them started with a spattering of  neurons and synapses already developing. By 8 months of age, according to an article called "Starting Smart", a baby could have 1,000 trillion synapses in his brain! Isn't that mind-blowing! At this point, there are literally endless possibilities for what your baby is capable of learning.
    Of course, this doesn't stay this way. The brain will begin to prune whichever synapses and neural pathways that are not being used as a means of strengthening the pathways that have already been established. Vision and visual comprehension, for example, is one of the very first senses that get "hard-wired" into our brains. If a new baby has a visual abnormality, the longer it takes to address and correct the problem the higher the chance that the child may never fully recover. Or if a child has a speech impediment, if not corrected by around 4 years of age, their brain starts to loose the ability to correct the problem and may struggle with the impediment for the rest of their lives.
    On the other hand, the more that neural pathways are being stimulated and used regularly, the stronger the connections and therefore, a healthier brain. It's like a footpath that gets used every day. It's clear and safe to walk on and gets you where you need to go efficiently. If that footpath becomes neglected and unused,  it soon gets overgrown, difficult to walk on, and may disappear all together. The more pathways, the more options and diversity we have. 
    Up to around the age of 5, it is to be considered the "critical period"  where babies and children are the most responsive to learning and proper development. This is where us, as parents, can do our best to get these synapses snapping in our childrens' brains. It's as simple as talking (or singing!) to our babies as much as we can. This is crucial to their language and social development. Move with your little ones. Wave your hands around, play finger games or do a silly dance. That covers their spatial and cognitive development. Read to them. Show them what you're reading. This will encourage a healthy start to literacy. You get the picture.

    Now, these are all practices that are fairly common knowledge and for the most part, we do them instinctively as parents. The real home-run hitter is that research shows that children will learn all these things to their fullest potential when sharing these experiences with someone they love and trust....that's you. Babies need and crave personal contact and touch. From the very beginning, babies will prefer human stimuli over any other. Did you know that babies who are less than 24 hours old show active brain activity when hearing their mother's voice? Looks like our little bundles are so much more than just "empty slates". Pretty cool, eh?