A few thoughts about the mind, the brain, and a child with early deprivation

The article I researched is called “A few thoughts about the mind, the brain, and a child with early deprivation.”  This article looks at the development of the infant brain during the very early stages.  Research shows that interaction at an early age with the parent or caregiver is crucial for infants.  Babies’ brains need to be stimulated in order to develop properly. Their brains are forming neural connections that need to be activated through a process called experience dependent development.  Experience dependent development simply means that the development of their brains depends on interaction with others.  A critical period for myelination of brain pathways occurs between birth and 18 months, and the basic circuits of the brain are forming during the first two years.  Therefore, interaction and stimulation of the brain is important from the very beginning.

So what happens when children don’t receive this stimulation?  Research shows that sometimes irreversible damage can occur.  In a study performed by Dr. Martin Teicher, the corpus callosum, which acts as the main information pathway between the two hemispheres of the brain, was 40 percent smaller than average in children who have been abused or neglected.  These types of abnormalities in the brain can lead to problems such as depression and anxiety.

To show the results of a lack of interaction at an early age, the article discusses a few cases, such as the Rumanian orphans.  These children rarely received any real attention from adults until they were adopted.  Although many of the orphans had loving adoptive parents, the children still developed social and emotional problems.  The children weren't connecting with their parents.  Brain scans were done on some of these children by Harry Chugani at the Children’s Hospital in Michigan.  He found that nearly all of them had functional problems in areas involving emotion. These children never received the stimulation their brains required in order to develop and deal with emotions properly.  So in conclusion, stimulation at an early age is crucial for brain development in children.  Development depends not only on genetic information, but on stimulation from the environment as well.

Source: http://www.ahealthymind.org/ans/library/Jung-Schore.pdf