BRINGING THE BRAIN TO PRESCHOOL:

Jane M. Healy, Ph.D.

�������� We are still far from a thorough understanding understand of the way the human brain develops and functions.� Yet ongoing research in the neurosciences offers clear directions about the manner in which children’s minds, emotions, personal and learning skills develop over the course of the first few years.�� A review of the general principles to emerge from this research helps us construct an effective and humane framework as we plan educational settings for young children.�� Moreover,� these principles offer clear guidelines for helping parents help their youngsters get off to a good start in learning—and in life.

�������� One important caveat must accompany any attempts to apply neuroscience to practical, real-life situations:� Nothing in the research has ever suggested a violation of common sense or an unnatural disruption of the normal activities, play, and socialization of the growing child.� Interpretations that involve “pushing” children to acquire skills in a developmentally inappropriate way (sometimes termed “Superbabying”) are frankly wrong and potentially damaging.� Likewise, advertising claims that enlist brain science to sell electronic technologies to make children “smarter” lack both science and common sense.�� Research on so-called “critical” or “sensitive” periods in neural development have rrecently been used to justify school curricula that press abstract learning (i.e., decoding words in reading) before the child has either the maturation or the interest to master the skill competently and joyfully.�� Clearly, one must proceed with informed caution as we tackle the critical challenge of providing the best possible start for all our children.

�������� My presentation is centered on slides which illustrate principles of brain development.�� In this paper I shall have to limit myself to explaining five general principles about the brain and learning that have emerged from neuroscience research.� These are both robust and useful as a start in penetrating the mysteries of mental growth.�� They are:

(1) The concept of neuroplasticity, or the brain’s continual change and adaptation to environmental stimuli.�

(2) Critical or sensitive periods and the need for different types of stimulation at different ages.

(3) The importance of the so-called “emotional brain,”� subcortical connections, and the effect of chemical messengers (neurotransmitters.)

(4) The brain’s search for meaning and patterns in experience.�

(5) The role of language in the development of intelligence, learning, and executive skills.

I shall also examine some of the influences in contemporary culture that have a particular impact on young children.� Throughout I shall make recommendations for a developmental approach to the education of both parents and children.

(1).� Neuroplasticity:� The Brain is Shaped by a Combination of Genetic and Environmental Factors.

��������� Before birth, the brain develops rapidly; this is a critical period for the basic architecture of the brain and the foundations of its future potential.� The program by which the nerve cells, or “neurons,” arrange themselves is mainly determined by a genetic program, but it may also be altered by environmental “insults” such as substance abuse, certain illnesses, or toxins in the mother’s environment.� It is impossible to overemphasize the importance of good nutrition, pre-natal education and care for the mothers of our next generation of citizens. The exact effect of prenatal influences may vary depending on what brain systems are developing concurrently.

(Illustration:� the prenatal brain)

��������� Nutrition� is important at every stage of brain development, and acute malnutrition before or after birth has been linked to a reduced volume of white matter (“myelin”), which facilitates the “connectivity” of the brain.� A vast network of connections develops gradually during childhood and adolescence.� Both maturation and experience impel the billions of neurons in each brain to form links transmitting messages from cell to cell.� With repeated use, these connections become larger and stronger, laying the foundation for a lifetime of intelligence.�

(Illustrations:� the neuron and its development; the synapse)

At birth, the brain actually contains an excess of neurons and potential connections (“synapses”).� Immediately after birth a process called “neural� pruning” begins to trim away excess connections to increase the brain’s efficiency, just as it strengthens connections that are used.� In cases of severe deprivation of input, such as a lack of auditory or visual stimulation, the underlying networks of cells may either fail to develop or be impaired.� Thus it is recommended that the infant experience a wide variety of interesting input.� This does not imply, however, overloading the infant brain with an excess of “enrichment” or “stimulation;”� young brains need quiet time, and they certainly do not thrive in a frenetic atmosphere or one charged with anxiety and pressure.� Most of all they need a sense of safety,� defined as having their needs readily met, warm and loving physical contact, and responsive caregiving throughout the early childhood years.�� The latter, in fact, has been associated with dramatically improved outcomes in both intellectual and personal skills.� Teaching parents and caregivers to respond appropriately—physically, emotionally, and intellectually—is one of the major gifts we can offer young children.�

��������� The human brain is programmed to seek challenge, and the infant and toddler are likely to be drawn to available activities that are brain-appropriate at any given age.�� For example, it is futile to try and “teach” a six-month-old to walk, whereas when the time is right, it is hard to prevent!� Likewise, children are normally “driven” to communicate, not only with words, but also with gesture and facial expression.� They need adults who know how to watch and respond sensitively to each emerging need.�

It is my belief that electronic media, such as television or computer game-type software,� are among the few things that can distract the young brain from its critical developmental tasks.� These programs are, quite literally, constructed to “steal” the child’s attention, which could account for the fact that amount of television exposure in early years correlates with symptoms of� attention deficit disorder in elementary years.� The American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended no screen time for children under age two, and strict limits after that, both in amount of viewing time and program content.�

In short, the child’s brain actually builds itself through response to a wide variety of stimuli, physical activity,� creative social play, manipulative play, language acquisition, and other mental challenges.�� We must not allow parents and educators to forget that play is, as far as the brain is concerned, the child’s important work.� In fact,� throughout the human lifespan, the healthy brain can continue to “play”with new ideas and respond to new challenges by forging new connections between neurons.�� A continued ability to play in such ways is a defining characteristic of highly successful and creative adults.�

(2) The Brain Has Different Needs at Different Stages of Development

In general, maturation or myelination proceeds from the bottom back of the cortex to over the top front.�

(Illustration:� the cortex)

Thus, the sensory and motor areas are in a rapid spurt of development starting at birth, and the refinement of these systems continues throughout the preschool years.� From age five to seven a shift occurs, as the sensory areas refine their ability to integrate input within and between the senses--into higher “association areas.”� At the same time, a spurt begins in growth of the prefrontal cortex, the “executive system” of the brain.� New developmental stages continue throughout adolescence and probably even until around age thirty.

��������� As any teacher can attest, each individual has his or her own timetable and pattern for this development.� Many very bright children are “late bloomers” whose timetables are just a bit slower than others; a critical implication for educators is to resist a “one size fits all” mentality in curriculum, testing, or expectations.�� Likewise, each human brain has a unique set of stronger and weaker talents, which we describe as a “learning style.”� Parents should be helped to understand that children need support and appropriate expectations no matter their stage of development or individual profile of abilities.� The malleability of the brain is such that even an apparent “weakness” can often be helped considerably or even overcome by sensitive and appropriate teaching.�

��������� Current research, in fact, suggests that the “sensitive periods” for most forms of human learning have much wider windows that has been believed.� Thus it is important, no matter what has come before—or failed to—, that we never give up on any child.

��������� In summary:� Both brain development and learning proceed first from concrete, sensory-motor experiences, manipulation of the physical and social environment, and beginning language development (eye gaze, gesture, facial expression, turn-taking games, early vocalizations).� As the preschool years advance, motor skills, language mastery, increasing self-control, attention, and experiences of oneself as powerful learner form the foundation for academic learning.� Symbolic learning is expressed through language and the ability to think about or picture something that is not present in the immediate physical environment.� For example, basic reading skills are built on the child’s own symbolic experience with the sounds and sequences of oral language and only later with more abstract formalized symbols of the written word.��� Text and comprehension skills are mastered through concept-building experiences with objects and events, visual discriminations (e.g., like/different), from oral language, stories, rhymes, rhythms. Mathematical concepts grow from hands-on manipulation of concrete objects (bigger/smaller, more/less, cause/effect) and games (e.g. move the counter 5 spaces ahead.) Once again, parents should know that such “childish” play activities are actually the strongest basis for early math achievement.� Later,� abstract learning continues to depend on the concrete and symbolic base laid in early childhood.� Adults provide scaffolds for the this growth by conversation, family activities, and continued physical and emotional nurturance.�

(Illustration:� building blocks of thought)

�Sometime after age five, for most youngsters, comes the time for written symbols such as alphabet letters and numerals.� If the brain’s “readiness” has been primed both by neural development and the right kind of experience, these skills should be mastered with relative ease and pleasure.� In an ideal world, difficulties will be noted and addressed with special instruction before the dread term “learning disabilities” enters into the picture.� “Diagnosis by failure” is a devastating substitute for appropriate early pedagogy!

The gradual maturation and exercise of the prefrontal executive system ultimately enables formal, abstract thinking and leads to success in higher-level education.� Along with academic skills, however, this system also mediates personal “habits of mind” such as attention, intrinsic motivation, planning, follow-through, and successful social interactions..� Early years lay the groundwork for these skills as adults model them and provide a well-regulated environment with consistent rules, consequences,� and realistic expectations for the child.��� At the same time, adults encourage the development of creativity and mental development not only by providing enriching activities and experiences with the arts, but also by acceptance of the child’s ideas and spontaneous creations.� Children who are genuinely respected have a much better chance of realizing whatever native potential they possess.�

3. The Importance of the “Emotional Brain”, Subcortical Connections, and Neurotransmitters

��������� Historically, education has focused almost exclusively on mental development and the acquisition of academic skills.� Nonetheless, brain sciences confirm that the cortex—or thinking brain—comprises only one part of a complex system.�� It is high time that educational policy take into account the whole child, who possesses not only an intellect but also powerful emotional impulses and needs.� All intellectual activity involves the so-called “emotional brain,” or limbic system, a collection of organs underlying the cortex.� Also critical are many subcortical areas deep in the brain.� These control basic bodily functions and instinctive responses such as “fight or flight,” but they also supply the “juice” enabling the connections for the most advanced intellectual functioning.�

��������� Several decades ago, Dr. Paul MacLean proposed that these three types of functions� represent a “triune brain.”

(Illustration:� the “triune brain”)

According to MacLean’s theory, subcortical and emotional centers act somewhat as an “on-off” switch for the thinking brain (cortex), since basic needs must be met before advanced intellectual activity becomes either necessary or worthwhile.� Thus if a child is severely frightened or otherwise emotionally distressed,� academic learning may be very difficult as the brain and body struggle to cope with this far more potent stressor.� While MacLean’s conceptualization is considerably over-simplified in light of today’s research, current studies do confirm its basic truth and utility.

��������� Current research shows us complex arrangements of feed-forward and feedback loops which extend up and down between the cortex, the limbic organs,� and the lower, reflexive centers at the base of the brain, including the cerebellum.

(Illustration:� the attention loop)

These networks are involved in all mental activities, one clear example of the impossibity of separating cognition and emotion.� It is important to note that there are many more connections running down from the cortex than up from the lower centers, suggesting a developmental process by which the human brain gradually learns to put the cortex more “in charge” of impulsive behaviors.� Doubtless, children who have repeated experiences in which they learn to exercise these controls stand a better chance of practicing and thus strengthening such functions.�� Some individuals appear to have more or less effective attention systems from birth, but the brain’s plasticity suggests that a well-regulated, physically healthy and supportive environment with models of appropriate behavior should help strengthen the control functions for any child.

��������� The brain’s functioning is enabled by numerous chemical substances which circulate in the brain, and particularly in the synapse.� These substances,� termed neurotransmitters, neuromodulators, neurohormones, or peptides facilitate the transmission of messages through the brain’s vast networks of billions of neurons.�� They also are powerful modulators of emotional state; a shortage of the neurotransmitter serotonin,� for example,� has been implicated in depression, and current medications used to treat this condition regulate the brain’s serotonin balance.� Likewise, the neurotransmitter dopamine is implicated in many cases of attention disorder, and the drug ritalin is thought to act on this system to increase attentional capacity.�� Interestingly enough, a few studies have suggested that certain behavioral habits (e.g., exciting video games) or therapies (e.g., cognitive-behavioral therapy) can also affect adults’ balance of these neurotransmitters, leaving open the question as to how much of the brain’s “habits” of neurotransmitter regulation are innate, and how much is learned from repeated environmental experiences.� The study of the developmental course of brain chemistry is barely in its infancy, significantly behind our understanding of how structural change occurs over the lifespan.� This new area of research surely presents an important and provocative new set of challenges.� Until they are unravelled, we will never be able to parse out the various influences of genes and environments on children’s outcomes.

4.� The Human Brain is Programmed to Seek Patterns of Meaning in Experience

��������� How is it possible that a three-year-old child has already mastered the basic sound system and grammatical rules of his/her language without ever having received any formal instruction?� The brain is a meaning-seeking organism, and even by eight months the infant has already begun to induce, from countless daily examples, the abstract patterns of sounds of the language and generalize the meaning of facial expressions on different caregivers.� During the toddler years complex rule systems are mastered with little evident effort (how to pluralize, how to denote tense, etc.)� Cognitive researchers have concluded that such learning takes place from a process of seeing and seeking patterns in daily experience; the normally developing child is impelled to form categories and induce relationships.� Some believe that one fundamental difficulty in autism is an inability to relate separate, isolated experiences into such a meaningfully patterned whole.� Thus the autistic child’s environment is processed in a confusing series of individual bits which, of course, lack either sense or understanding.�

��������� Many parts of the brain are recruited in such a vast effort to gain understanding, and for the young child the integrity of the sensory systems and the neural links between them are critical to this process.� Here is another reason why effective early learning and teaching must proceed from a base of the child’s own interest and understanding in a hands-on, real-world format� The brain is capable of memorizing meaningless data (such as reciting the alphabet, for example, for a very young child), but this is a relatively low-level form of cognition compared to understanding the meaning of words or representing objects or ideas in words even though they are not present in the immediate environment.� Here, incidentally, lies the problem with much of the computer “learning” software that is being so eagerly peddled in the United States; children learn to repeat and recite, to the delight of their parents, but, without understanding, the exercise is not only futile in the long run, but also steals valuable time from important and age-appropriate activities that lay the groundwork for higher-level thinking skills.� We do not want to raise children like the 5-year-old who came home from school one afternoon and was asked by his mother, “What did you learn in school today?”

��������� With a sigh, he responded, “Well, I learned that five plus three is eight.� Mommy, what’s eight?”

5.� The Brain Needs Language for Both Academic and Personal Development

��������� It is common knowledge that language development is important for children learning to communicate, read, and write.� Is not generally understood that language also represents a cornerstone of development of personal skills such as attention, intrinsic motivation, planning, organization, self-discipline, follow-through, and social relatedness.� These abilities are commonly associated with the pre-frontal cortex, the so-called “executive brain,” which has particularly strong connective loops to the lower centers as described above.��� I have contended in the past--and continue to do so,--that that this executive system will be short-changed in our visual-media-saturated culture where many parents lack the understanding and ability to scaffold the process of language development and attention in their children.�� Presently, in fact, the term “executive function disorder” has not only entered the mainstream of learning disability diagnosis, but appears to be affecting dramatically increasing numbers of youngsters every year, at least in the United States.�

This category, of course, includes the controversial “epidemic” of attention deficit(hyperactivity) disorder (ADHD) which accounts for huge numbers of children receiving psychotropic medications.

One mechanism by which language and executive skills such as attention are closely tied appears to be through the developmental process of “inner speech” or “self-talk.”� This instinctive talent arises as soon as the infant begins to soothe herself with babbling, continues as the toddler attempts to regulate his own behavior by talking out loud to himself (“Light socket. No, no!”� “This one goes here…….”), and reaches fruition around the age of seven (or later) as the child internalizes the speech as a natural adjunct to problem-solving, social behavior, planning, problem-solving, or self-monitoring.�� Studies have indicated that children with attention or conduct disorders do not tend to employ inner speech in this manner; some behavioral therapies are based on attempts to train the facility.

��������� Thus, the obvious benefits of language development for the linguistic talents of the human brain are supplemented by those involving executive processes.� It is possible that the act of translating thought into words inevitably recruits areas of pre-frontal cortex that respond by developing yet more refined abilities as the skills are acquired and practiced.�

��������� Clearly, a learning setting for young children must not be a quiet place!� By depriving a young child of the opportunity—in fact, the necessity—of talking to herself at some level about what she is engaged in, we short-circuit the route to higher cognitive functions.�

Studies of parents in different socio-economic groups have shown that many parents of lower SES tend to value quiet, well-mannered children over curious, questioning, talkative (and sometimes annoying) ones.�� In fact, such differences in child-rearing practices have been posited as one partial explanation for persistent disparities in early school achievement between children from middle- and lower-class families.� Parent educators and early care providers should take note.

The simple fact emerging from all the research is that the growing brain—of whatever age-- is the one asking the questions, actively pursuing meaning, and fortunate enough to have open-ended situations in which to play with objects and ideas.�� This is the intellectual climate we must encourage for the young children of the 21^st century, who will face a myriad of new questions that have never been asked, challenges undreamed of even today, and a world fraught with both promise and peril.�� The outcome—including the future of human life on this planet-- depends on whether or not we—as parents and teachers—can learn to understand, respect, and honor the rare and precious qualities of the young child’s mind.