Doctor lectures on early childhood brain development
By ANDREW THAGARD
News Writer
Pediatrician and author Patricia Keener spoke on the brain and its development during early childhood in Tuesday's presentation titled "Surviving the Wonder Years." The event was the second in the Mini-Medical School Lecture Series.
Using a combination of slides, video clips and passing out copies of her reference book, "Caring for Kids," Keener focused on neural anatomy and how certain functions like language emerge in young children.
"I think it's one of the most exciting fields in medicine," she said.
According to Keener, collaboration among professionals involved in different aspects of neural development has recently revolutionized the understanding of brain structure and function.
"We have neurologists talking to psychologists," she said. "There's a great sharing of information."
Keener discussed the newborn's brain, a structure she said is only partially assembled at birth.
"Brains aren't like computers," she said. "[Infants] are not born hardwired. The various connections are wired after they're born."
The majority of the synapses that link neural cells together form after birth and their development is based on the environment. According to Keener, newborns have approximately 50 trillion synapses. The number peaks a year later at 1,000 trillion and then drops to 500 trillion by age 20. This makes toddlers ideally suited to learn, she said.
Caretakers need to be aware of this critical time and attentive to the child's emotional state, she said, adding that impersonal day care facilities can have adverse affects on a child's development.
Keener warned against the temptation of replacing human contact with toys designed to provide human-like stimulation. She said that in 1997, only 10 percent of toys relied on electronics. By the year 2000, the percentage had jumped to 60.
"I think it's a problem when parents are spending money on these things instead of a rocking chair," she said.
Keener also focused on certain behaviors and functions that are time sensitive, using vision and language as examples.
"Cataracts in a newborn are removed very early," she said. "If you don't take that cataract out early that child will not be able to make the connections in the visual cortex and will not see."
Language, Keener said, is another function that requires early exposure. At birth, newborns have the potential to recognize and differentiate between every sound or phoneme in every human language. Early in development, however, associations for certain sounds are strengthened while the ability to distinguish between others is lost, as they are not reinforced.
Keener also spoke of the universality of "parentese," or baby talk, which leads parents to speak in a higher pitch, using shorter phrases and accentuating the vowels. This type of speech, she said, along with the babbling noises a baby makes, facilitates the successful development of language.
Keener is a professor of clinical pediatrics and assistant director for Medical Service Learning at Indiana University School of Medicine. From 1989 to 1992 she served as medical director of the Indianapolis Campaign for Healthy Babies, a program that addressed infant mortality problems.
The Mini-Medical School Lecture Series is presented by the South Bend Center for Medical Education and the Indiana University School of Medicine and is sponsored by the Medical Education Foundation. Next Tuesday, Michael Vasko will present a lecture titled "Pain: Why does it hurt?"
All News Stories for Wednesday, March 26, 2003
