An early childhood surrounded by books and educational toys will leave positive fingerprints on a person’s brain well into their late teens, a 20-year research study has shown.
Scientists found that the more mental stimulation a child gets about the age of four, the more developed the parts of their brains dedicated to language and cognition will be in the decades ahead.
It is known that childhood experience influences brain development, but the only evidence scientists have had for this has usually come from extreme cases such as children who had been abused or suffered trauma.
Martha Farah, director of the Center for Neuroscience and Society at the University of Pennsylvania, who led the latest study, wanted to find out how a normal range of experiences in childhood might influence brain development.
Farah took data from surveys of home life and brain scans of 64 participants over 20 years. Her results, presented Sunday night at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in New Orleans, showed that cognitive stimulation from parents at the age of four was the key factor in predicting the development of several parts of the cortex — the layer of gray matter on the outside of the brain — 15 years later.
The participants had been tracked since they were four years old. Researchers had visited their homes and recorded details about their lives to measure cognitive stimulation, such as the number of children’s books they had, whether they had toys that taught them about colors, numbers or letters, or whether they played with real or toy musical instruments.
The researchers also scored the participants on “parental nurturance” — how much warmth, support or care the child got from the parent. The researchers carried out the same surveys when the children were eight years old. When the participants were aged between 17 and 19, they had their brains scanned.
Farah’s results showed that the development of the cortex in late teens was closely correlated with a child’s cognitive stimulation at the age of four. All other factors — including parental nurturance at all ages and cognitive stimulation at age eight — had no effect.
Farah said her results were evidence for the existence of a sensitive period, early in a person’s life, that determined the optimal development of the cortex.
“It really does support the idea that those early years are especially influential,” she said.
Around the time the participants had their brains scanned in their late teens, they were also given language tests and the thinner their cortex, the better their language comprehension, Farah said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese