NEWBORN NEURONS

As a baby emerges from the womb, brain development expands to include processing responses to the baby’s new experiences sights, sounds, smells, actions, sensations, and emotions. Networks of neurons, primed to receive new stimuli,compete for survival. It’s a random battle at first, but soon becomes more organized as environmental stimuli strengthen some connections while others wither. If the baby is exposed to a broad vocabulary and a wide range of music, the connections for language and sound recognition grow stronger. If the baby is kept in an environment lacking in toys and visual stimulation, the baby’s analytical powers may be slow to develop.

ESTABLISHING NETWORKS

Defects in infants’ eyes illustrate the sensitivity of a newborn’s brain and the competing neural networks. When a child is born with a cataract in one eye, that eye is deprived of normal vision, and the portion of the brain that processes information from that eye suffers lack of stimulation. The baby’s one normally functioning eye begins to process all visual information.

NEWBORN SIGHT

WE CAN’T KNOW for certain what the world looks like to a newborn; babies don’t answer interviewers’ questions. However, scientists who study the makeup of new-borns’ eyes and test for whether babies will gaze at objects believe that for the first months of life, children lack the ability to see fine lines and a full spectrum of colors. The world probably looks like a blurred, faded photograph as seen through a card-board tube.

New-borns appear to be hardwired for looking at faces. Shortly after birth, infants will look at faces longer than they will look at any other object.

The “use it or lose it” principle starts to work-with a vengeance. Neural connections develop for the good eye but fail to do so for the eye with the cataract. Unless the cataract is removed shortly after birth, the child will remain blind in that eye. Even if the cataract is removed later, the brain has lost its one chance to develop the neural circuitry to process visual signals from the eye; the eyeball may appear healthy, but it cannot communicate with the brain.

If surgery removes the cataract in time, the strong, already existing neural connections of the stronger eye give it a favored place in brain development. In order to make both eyes work with the same acuity, doctors often patch the stronger eye for a few hours every day. That way, for extended periods, all of the neural development for vision is processed via the weaker eye. Its brain circuitry grows stronger by not having to compete all the time with the good eye.

The process of establishing and strengthening connections in the brain to process vision underscores the fact that certain periods are absolutely critical to proper functional development. While the brain retains a measure of plasticity among existing networks, it also seldom offers a second chance for establishing those networks at an early age. In other words, the brain cannot expand and reconnect a neural network that doesn’t exist or one that exists, like a dead-end road, without functional traffic.