 |
The brain is the most important organ of the human being. It is a very complex organ which has a preponderant role in all the functions of the body. Moreover, the absence of brain activity defines clinical death. Brain maturation, which is significant before birth – with the generation of over 100 billion nerve cells – and during the first two years of life with a continuing growing brain volume, is a period of great vulnerability. The developing brain is particularly sensitive to environmental influences, such as toxic early life stress. Brain development may be affected through sensing pathways by sound, touch, vision, smell, food, thoughts, drugs, injury, disease and other factors.
In the developing course, brain areas do not mature at the same time. For example, auditory perception begins before birth. The newborn brain is already able to recognize familiar voices and tunes from the foetal period. On the contrary, the cerebral areas implicated in declarative memory (“remembering”) and in vision are not mature at birth. To become fully developed, these systems, including the auditory cortex, need the stimulation that occurs after birth.
An important aspect of the very young brain is its capacity for change. When maturing, the brain becomes less plastic; for example, by the end of the first year, the parts of the brain that differentiate sounds are becoming specialized according to the language the baby has heard. At the same time, the brain is already starting to lose the ability to recognize different sounds found in other languages.
See also...
|
|