Educational books and toys not only make a child smarter, but also influence brain growth, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania (USA) have revealed at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. The results of their work indicate that there is aextremely sensitive period in childhoodduring which brain development is strongly influenced by environmental factors.
The researchers selected 64 children who were followed from birth to adolescence, which included a series of visits between the ages of 4 and 8 to assess their environment, quantify educational books and toys, as well as the stimuli provided by the children. fathers. Ten years later, the scientists obtained images of the participants’ brains and found that the level of mental stimulation received by children at4 yearswas related to the thickness of two regions of the cerebral cortex in adolescence, and that this wasthinner in participants with more stimuli.
This effect occurs because, when the brain develops, it always produces more neuronal connections than necessary. These excess junctions are eliminated over time in a process called “synaptic pruning”, which is highly dependent on experience. Synaptic pruning reduces the thickness of the cerebral cortex and makes information processing much more efficient.
The scientists observed that, while at 4 years the stimuli influence the development of the cerebral cortex, this effect was much smaller at the age of 8 years, and that other factors such as the mother’s intelligence were also not influential.
“We have verified that parental care influences thebrain structure“, explained Martha Farah, one of the authors of the work.” I do not think that the results are a coincidence, but it seems that cognitive stimulation at an early age leads to changes in the thickness of the cerebral cortex.
