Brain Food For Infants -- Stimulation Is Key To How Babies Learn

Psychology. Everywhere you look this month infant development seems to be the topic of the day. A good place to start may be work being done by University of Washington researchers, who are adding considerable insight into how infant brains develop. -----------------------------------------------------------------

New brain imaging technologies and research into newborn behavior are telling scientists what good parents seem to know instinctively: Loving parents make smarter, happier babies.

Scientists now know that learning begins much earlier than anyone ever suspected, and that an infant's earliest experiences lay down the circuits for future learning. They also know that most parents are providing critical "brain food" when they hold their babies, talk to them, sing to them, read to them and provide them with a loving, nurturing environment.

These studies also highlight the dangers of neglect. Children who don't get the right kind of care in the early years will miss out on important, brain-forming activities.

This month, infant brain development has been - and will continue to be - the hot topic in the media. At the White House, the Clintons recently convened a one-day conference on early-childhood development and learning. NBC's "Today" show spent a week discussing infant brain development. Newsweek hit the newsstands with a special edition devoted entirely to child development and the brain. All this week, ABC's "Good Morning America" (on KOMO-TV) will contain features on the brain, and on April 28 ABC will air "I Am Your Child," an hourlong prime-time special on the importance of good care in the first three years.

For researchers, the attention has been a heady experience. "I'm stunned!" said Patricia Kuhl, chairwoman of the university's Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences. Kuhl appeared with Hillary Clinton as a guest on the "Today" show last week and was one of six experts who spoke about brain development during the White House conference.

"What I began studying in graduate school - almost 30 years ago now - was considered so detailed, so esoteric, that only a dedicated few were interested," Kuhl said. Now software companies, neurobiologists, neuroscientists, educators and policy makers are listening.

Kuhl's work has determined that when parents speak, newborns listen intently - and what they hear helps hard-wire the brain for future learning.

UW psychology professor Geraldine Dawson is another researcher who has been at the forefront of investigations into how infants develop. Her work has shown that depressed mothers have babies with aberrant brain-wave patterns. She is continuing her research to determine if these early experiences have long-lasting effects on the child's behavior.

The explosion of knowledge about the brain stems in part from new techniques allowing researchers to examine the brains of babies at work. Until recently, researchers had to rely on animal studies and autopsies of babies to figure out how the brain works, said Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute in New York.

But now, new brain-imaging technologies such as positron-emission tomography (PET) scans and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are bringing scientists a greater understanding of how rapidly the brain grows.

According to "Brain Development in Young Children," a report released by the Families and Work Institute in conjunction with the White House conference on the brain, an explosion of growth occurs in the first three years of life.

At birth, a baby's brain contains about 100 million neurons, the brain cells that carry electrical messages through the brain. Each one can produce up to 15,000 synapses, or connections to other brain cells. Those synapses are the key to healthy development and learning.

When a baby is born, he or she is flooded with sensory experiences: light, sound, smells, things to touch, things to taste. These experiences cause the brain to create trillions of connections, essentially "wiring" the brain for learning.

Repeated experiences determine how the brain is wired. "Those synapses that have been activated frequently by virtue of repeated early experience tend to become permanent; the synapses that have not been used at all, or often enough, tend to become eliminated," the report says.

As babies grow, the brain's wiring becomes more defined. Every baby's brain becomes unique - not just a product of genetics, but also heavily shaped by the baby's experiences and environment.

The number of synapses increases rapidly until age 3, the brain creating twice as many synapses as it will ever need. The number of synapses holds steady until age 10, then unused synapses begin to disappear. An adult's brain actually contains fewer synapses than that of a 3-year-old child.

Kuhl's research focuses on when human babies begin to learn language. She was drawn to language development because it is one of the most complex mental activities we engage in: "No other animal on the planet has a communicative system even approaching the complexity of human language," she said.

Researchers have known for years that the brain of every newborn comes equipped with the mental wiring to learn any language. "There isn't a single speech sound contrast used in the world's languages that infants can't distinguish at birth," Kuhl said.

Yet Kuhl discovered that by 11 months, babies have already started to lose the ability to differentiate between phonetic sounds that are not used in the language that their parents speak.

For example, at six months Japanese babies can detect the difference between the sounds "la" and "ra." By the time they are 11 months old, Japanese babies can't distinguish between the two sounds because they are not differentiated in the Japanese language. And babies exposed only to English begin to lose the ability to recognize sounds that are unique to Japanese.

Kuhl has determined how early language differentiation begins by working with babies at language labs in Sweden, Japan and Seattle. During the experiments the babies, sitting on their mother's laps, are exposed to strings of phonetic sounds. They are trained to turn their heads whenever they hear a difference in the sounds. When they turn their heads, they are rewarded by the sight of a dancing toy animal.

The experiments show that language learning begins long before a baby is able to speak his or her first words. It begins not with words or grammar, but with the phonetic units of language - the consonants and vowels that make up words. "Infants are beginning to learn language in the crib," Kuhl said.

Her research shows that, by talking to their babies, parents strengthen pathways in the brain that lay the foundations for language learning. "When we speak to our children, we provide them with a kind of mental exercise," Kuhl said. "The experience we give them, the mental exercise we provide, causes their brains to change."

By showing how babies use phonetic units to build their understanding of language, Kuhl's research may one day help computer scientists figure out how to program computers to recognize the spoken word.

Her research points out the importance of diagnosing deficits in an infant's ability to recognize language. The brain's plasticity early in life makes it possible to intervene early and reduce the severity of a later language problem, she said.

Given the findings of Kuhl and other scientists, should parents rush to the toy store to load up on "superbaby" toys that will give infants an early head start on learning? Not at all, said Galinsky of the Families and Work Institute.

Instead of supercharged baby toys, parents should concentrate on giving babies good, responsive care.

The importance of loving care is highlighted by the work of the UW's Dawson, who has shown that the babies of depressed mothers show markedly reduced brain activity in the left frontal lobe, an area of the brain that serves as a center for joy and other lighthearted emotions. By age 3, these children start to have behavior problems. Dawson's research will be featured during Friday's broadcast of "Good Morning America" on ABC-TV.

"What the research is telling us is what we have instinctively done for years: Talk, sing, read to your baby," Galinsky said. "This is not about flash cards in utero; it's about caring and responsive relationships."

Kuhl amplified the importance of talking to babies. "They can't talk back, but the research shows they are listening, so parents should keep talking to them," she said. "It's altering brain structure, and making both us and them feel good." -----------------------------------------------------------------

Resources:

On the Web

http://www.familiesandwork.org

http://www.zerotothree.org

http://www.today.msnbc.com

Books:

"Your Child's Growing Mind," Jane M. Healy, completely revised and updated in 1994

"The Growth of the Mind," Stanley Greenspan, 1997 (Addison-Wesley)

Magazines:

Time Magazine, Feb. 2,

Newsweek, April 24, 1997, will feature a cover story on infant brain development.