It suggests that infants and babies need not only a loving, but talkative and articulate caretaker, and that a more verbal family will increase an infant's chances for success. Tenn. And it offers yet another reason to provide stimulating, high quality daycare for infants whose primary caretakers work, which is unavoidably expensive. The idea that early experience shapes human potential is not new, said Dr. Harry Chugani, a pediatric neurologist at Wayne State University in Detroit and one of the scientists whose research has shed light on critical periods in child brain development. What is new is the extent of the research in the field known as cognitive neuroscience and the resulting synthesis of findings on the influence of both nature and nurture. Before birth, it appears that genes predominantly direct how the brain establishes basic wiring patterns.
Neurons grow and travel into distinct neighborhoods, waiting further instructions.
After birth, it seems that environmental factors predominate. A recent study found that mice exposed to an enriched environment have more brain cells than mice raised in less intellectually stimulating conditions. It is a radical and shocking concept. Experience in the first year of life lays the basis for networks of neurons that enable us to be smart, creative and adaptable in all the years that follow, said Dr. Esther Thelen, a neurobiologist at Indiana University in Bloomington. There is no master program pulling it together but rather the parts self-organize.