Reflections

     Blogging was a new experience for me. Blogging about this particular assignment was difficult, primarily because I have questioned my understanding of the assignment from the beginning. I looked at the guide as instructions for a lesson I need to construct, rather than a process I needed to experience. I hope my final product meets the requirements of the task itself. If not, it has certainly been a learning experience, at least.
     I would hesitate to use this format for some of the learners with which I am familiar - I train many first year teachers and this would require more of the student than they would freely give. For others, I think a blog would be beneficial to the trainings. It would be a way to express so much more of the thought process involved than time constraints frequently allow.  As an instructor, it would be an interesting view into a student's deliberation of a topic.

 
    

My Research Map

Here is the itinerary of my information journey. What a long, strange trip it's been!

Research and websites on brain development in young children

·         http://www.bbbgeorgia.org/index.php

Better Brains for Babies (BBB) is a collaboration of state and local, public and private organizations dedicated to promoting awareness and education about the importance of early brain development in the healthy growth and development of infants and young children in Georgia.

·         http://www.zerotothree.org/

Neuroscientists have documented that our earliest days, weeks and months of life are a period of unparalleled growth when trillions of brain cell connections are made. Research and clinical experience also demonstrate that health and development are directly influenced by the quality of care and experiences a child has with his parents and other adults. 

·         http://www.macbrain.org/

The Research Network on Early Experience and Brain Development was founded in 1998 to address questions of how the experiences of early childhood are incorporated into the structures of the developing brain, and how, in turn, those changes in the structures of the brain influence behavior.

·         http://childtrauma.org/cta-library/brain-dev-neuroscience/

A major activity of the CTA is to translate emerging findings about the human brain and child development into practical implications for the ways we nurture, protect, enrich, educate and heal children. The “translational neuroscience” work of the CTA has resulted in a range of innovative programs in therapeutic, child protection and educational systems.

·         http://developingchild.harvard.edu/key_concepts/brain_architecture/

A remarkable explosion of new knowledge about the developing brain and human genome, linked to advances in the behavioral and social sciences, tells us that early experiences are built into our bodies and that early childhood is a time of both great promise and considerable risk. 

·         http://www.urbanchildinstitute.org/why-0-3/baby-and-brain

Thanks to recent advances in technology, we have a clearer understanding of how these effects are related to early brain development. Neuroscientists can now identify patterns in brain activity that appear to be associated with some types of negative early experiences.

·         http://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/aap-health-initiatives/EBCD/Pages/default.aspx

Promotion of optimal early brain and child development is essential for the health and well-being of children. During these critical first few years of life, safe, stable, and nurturing relationships are critical to healthy brain development.

·         https://www.childwelfare.gov/

A service of the Children's Bureau, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, we provide access to print and electronic publications, websites, databases, and online learning tools for improving child welfare practice, including resources that can be shared with families.

·         http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/res/brain.html

As recently as the 1980s, many professionals thought that by the time babies are born, the structure of their brains was already genetically determined. However, emerging research shows evidence of altered brain functioning as a result of early abuse and neglect. The key to why this occurs appears to be in the brain.

·         http://www.trauma-pages.com/a/schore-2001b.php

The Effects of Early Relational Trauma on Right Brain Development, Affect Regulation, & Infant Mental Health by Allan N. Schore, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine.

·         http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/278537.php

A new study recently published in the American Journal of Psychiatry has found an association between child abuse and the reduction of gray matter in the brain that is responsible for information processing.

·         http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/11/04/242945454/childhood-maltreatment-can-leave-scars-in-the-brain

Brain scans of teenagers revealed weaker connections between the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus in both boys and girls who had been maltreated as children, a team from the University of Wisconsin reports in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Girls who had been maltreated also had relatively weak connections between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala.

Specific Risks of Negative Experiences of Brain Development

Specific problems vary depending upon the nature, intensity, duration, and timing of neglect and abuse. Some children will have profound and obvious problems; others will have very subtle problems that do not seem to relate to early life neglect. Some possibilities:

•  Developmental delays: Lack of consistent and enriched experiences in early childhood can cause delays in motor, language, social, and cognitive development.

• Eating: Children may hoard and hide food, or eat as if the food will disappear any moment. They may fail to thrive, vomit, and have swallowing problems.

•  Soothing behavior: Children may use primitive and bizarre soothing behaviors, especially when stressed. They may bang their heads, rock, chant, scratch, or bite/cut themselves.

•  Emotional functioning: A range of emotional issues is common in maltreated children. A common trait is “indiscriminate attachment,” affectionate behaviors with relatively unknown people to secure safety rather than develop an emotional bond.

•  Inappropriate modeling: Children model adult behavior. Children who have been sexually abused are at-risk of being further victimized or perpetrating on younger children. 

•  Aggression: Childhood aggression and cruelty often result from a lack of empathy and poor impulse control. 

 

Risks of Broken Connections

     Physical abuse can cause direct damage to a baby's or child's developing brain. For instance, we now have extensive evidence of the damage that shaking a baby can cause. According to the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome (2009), shaking can destroy brain tissue and tear blood vessels. In the short-term, shaking can lead to seizures, loss of consciousness, or even death. In the long-term, shaking can damage the fragile brain so that a child develops a range of sensory impairments, as well as cognitive, learning, and behavioral disabilities.

     But abuse can interfere with development. To cope with overwhelming experiences of distress, the brain can alter patterns of signaling from the pathways involved, which can ultimately leave those regions underdeveloped from reduced input. The brain of a child who is raped, for example, may react by reducing the connectivity of the regions that were hurt. The ability and desire to form emotional relationships is related to the organization and functioning of specific parts of the human brain—systems that develop during infancy and the first years of life. Experiences during this early vulnerable period affect a child’s core attachment capabilities. A child’s ability to feel empathy, be caring, inhibit aggression, love, and acquire other characteristics typical of a healthy, happy, and productive person are tied to the child’s earliest experiences. 

The Brain's Response

A key issue in understanding altered brain development in children who have been abused is that the way in which their brains develop is often a very adaptive response to their negative environment, but it is maladaptive in other environments.If a child lives in a threatening, chaotic world, his brain will be hyper-alert for danger. But if this environment persists, and the child’s brain is focused on developing and strengthening its strategies for survival, other strategies may not develop as fully.

When a child is exposed to chronic, traumatic stress, his brain sensitizes the pathways for the fear response and literally creates memories such that his fear response becomes almost automatic; he doesn’t really think about it. This is called a state of “hyper-arousal.” The regions of the brain involved in the hyper-arousal response are always “on,” and because of this, the child may frequently experience hyperactivity, anxiety, impulse control issues, and sleep problems.

While hyper-arousal is more common in older children and males, dissociation is more common in younger children and in females — children who often feel or are immobile or powerless. Just as children in a state of hyper-arousal have sensitized neural pathways controlling their response to a threatening environment, children in a state of dissociation have sensitized neural pathways that elicit a different response. A child in a dissociative state, when presented with a threat, may “freeze,”
both physically and cognitively. When an adult asks or tells them to do something, they don’t respond. If the adult becomes angry and more threatening, the child becomes even more anxious and moves further into full dissociation.

Developmental Disadvantages

    Psychologists have long known that children of poorly educated, low-income parents often don’t reach the same intellectual levels as children of well-educated, wealthy parents. Parents who are preoccupied with a daily struggle to ensure that their children have enough to eat and are safe from harm may not have the resources, information, or time they need to provide the stimulating experiences that foster optimal brain development. Infants and children who are rarely spoken to, who are exposed to few toys, and who have little opportunity to explore and experiment with their environment may fail to fully develop the neural connections and pathways that facilitate later learning. Despite their normal genetic endowment, these children are at a significant intellectual disadvantage and are likely to require costly special education or other remedial services when they enter school.

     Studies have shown that exposure to alcohol or other drugs, especially early in pregnancy, can alter the development of the cortex, reduce the number of neurons that are created, and affect the way in which chemical messengers are used.   Although not all children who are exposed develop neuro-biological problems, many do. These problems include difficulties with attention, memory, problem-solving, and abstract thinking.Researchers believe that during these years there may be “sensitive periods” for development of certain capabilities. Because synapses are being formed at such an intense pace during this time, the opportunities for learning are almost limitless. But as the process of pruning synapses starts to increase, especially after age 3, these opportunities begin to decrease . If certain synapses and neuronal pathways are not repeatedly activated, they may be discarded, and the capabilities they promised may be diminished.
      Malnutrition, both before and during the first few years after birth, has been shown
to result in stunted brain growth and slower passage of electrical signals in the brain. These effects on the brain are linked to cognitive, social, and behavioral deficits with possible long-term consequences. Babies’ brains grow and develop as they interact with their environment and learn how to function within that environment. When babies’ cries bring food or comfort, they are strengthening the neuronal pathways that help them learn how to get their needs met, both physically and emotionally. But babies who do not get responses to their cries, and babies whose cries are met with abuse, learn different lessons. The neuronal pathways that are developed and strengthened under negative conditions prepare children to cope in that negative environment, and their ability to respond to nurturing and kindness may be impaired.
     Brief periods of moderate, predictable stress are a problem - in fact, they prepare a child to cope with the general world. The body’s survival actually depends upon the ability to respond to stress. But prolonged, severe, or unpredictable stress—including abuse and
neglect—during a child’s early years is a problem. The brain’s development can literally
be altered by these experiences, resulting in negative impacts on the child’s physical, cognitive, emotional, and social growth. Chronic stress sensitizes neural pathways and over-develops certain regions of the brain involved in anxiety and fear responses, and
often results in the under-development of other pathways and regions of the brain.

    

Plasticity

     The basic architecture of the brain is constructed through a process that begins early in life and continues into adulthood. Simpler circuits come first and more complex brain circuits build on them later. Genes provide the basic blueprint, but experiences influence how or whether genes are expressed. Together, they shape the quality of brain architecture and establish either a sturdy or a fragile foundation for all of the learning, health, and behavior that follow. Plasticity, or the ability for the brain to reorganize and adapt, is greatest in the first years of life and decreases with age.

   Some areas of the brain, such as those which help us see clearly, become less "plastic" or changeable when the pruning is over. This has led to tremendous concern about providing what the brain needs to prune and organize itself correctly before the "windows of opportunity" close. For example, surgeons now remove congenital cataracts as early in infancy as possible, because they know that if they wait until the child is older, the neural connections between his eyes and his brain will fail to develop properly, and he will never be able to see.

   Our brains shape and reshape themselves in ways that depend on what we use them for throughout our lives. Learning language is an example of how experiences contribute to each person’s unique pattern of brain development.  However, which language a child learns to speak depends on the language he experiences, and his brain will adapt to this specific language. When an infant is 3 months old, his brain can distinguish several hundred different spoken sounds, many more than are present in his native language. Over the next several months, however, his brain will organize itself more efficiently so that it only recognizes those spoken sounds that are part of the language that he regularly hears. After about age 10, however, plasticity for this function is greatly diminished; therefore, most people find it difficult to learn to speak a foreign language as well as a native speaker if they only begin to learn it in adolescence or adulthood. Early experiences can determine how proficient a child becomes in his or her native language. Researchers found that when mothers frequently spoke to their infants, their children learned almost 300 more words by age 2 than did their peers whose mothers rarely spoke to them.

Brain Architecture

    

     The brain is comprised of many regions that perform specific functions, such as identifying what we see, processing spoken language, or assessing whether we are in danger. Within each of these brain areas are millions of neurons, or nerve cells, which send messages to each other across synapses. These trillions of nerves and synapses and the pathways they form make up the "wiring" of the brain; they allow all of the various areas to communicate and function together in a coordinated way. The number and organization of connections in the brain influence everything from the ability to recognize letters of the alphabet to facility at managing complex social relationships.

      In most regions of the brain, no new neurons are formed after birth. Instead, brain development consists of an ongoing process of wiring and re-wiring the connections among neurons. New synapses between cells are constantly being formed, while others are broken or pruned away. This happens throughout life. However, in early childhood the brain is genetically programmed to produce more synapses than it will ultimately use.This blooming of synapses happens at different times in different areas of the brain. Development then proceeds by keeping the synapses that are used and pruning away those that aren’t. The pruning of synapses happens over the childhood years as the different areas of the brain develop. Pruning allows the brain to keep the connections that have a purpose, while eliminating those that aren’t doing anything. In short, pruning increases the efficiency with which the brain can do what it needs to do. But, because the brain operates on the "use it or lose it" rule, an "over-pruning" of these connections can occur when a child is deprived of normally expected experiences in the early years. This leaves the child struggling to do what would have come more naturally otherwise.

Over-thinking This Assignment

     I was initially overwhelmed with this assignment. As usual, I was overly analytical about it and assumed my confusion was due to my inability to comprehend some complicated aspect of the work. Instead, I reread the directions and realized I had interpreted them incorrectly. Now the process is moving along much more smoothly.
     I am an information addict. I gathered way too much data on the subject of brain development in early childhood and started to drown in it. From prenatal to adolescence, the human brain goes through major changes. I began my exploration of brain development at Better Brains for Babies (BBB) and finally stopped at a blog on National Public Radio. I visited Zero to Three, Developing Child at Harvard's Brain Architecture, Urban Child Institute, American Academy of Pediatrics, Medical News Today, Child Welfare, and Trauma Pages, to name a few. 
     This is how I approach many research topics. I overload myself with sources and begin the process of selecting what I can use. Therefore, the Metacognition theory as a search model seemed a natural fit for me. I read multiple articles and visit many websites, and then proceed to adjust my focus as necessary.
     I attended a training for trainers at BBB. This included  modules on brain anatomy, brain development, foundations for learning, attachment, physical well-being, play, consistency, and stress and trauma. I was surprised at how much experiences impacted brain development, especially abuse and neglect. I began to research that aspect of development more thoroughly. This is where I would like to focus my work now.

      
     

Learning Styles

     Depending on where you look or who you ask, there are 3-8 different types of learners. At a minimum, the basic 3 are visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. Of those choices, I am definitely a visual learner. I prefer to read or see explanations rather than listening to them. 
     If you go deeper into learning styles, you find visual (spatial), aural (auditory-musical), verbal (linguistic), physical (kinesthetic), logical (mathematical), social (interpersonal), and solitary (intrapersonal), and naturalistic. I took a quiz on multiple intelligences and learning styles here:
 http://www.edutopia.org/multiple-intelligences-assessment 
with mostly unsurprising results. 

Linguistic 75%

Logical-Mathematical 69%

Visual-Spatial 58%

Intrapersonal 63%

Interpersonal 56%

Musical 19%

Bodily-Kinesthetic 17%

Naturalistic 25%

The only unexpected outcome was the small gap between inter- and intrapersonal scores. I am definitely an introvert and rarely prefer a large group to solitude. But I do love school so maybe in that area I am more social than I suspected. 

     I found this infographic on learning styles and wanted to share it. It only lists 7 of the 8 I mentioned, but there doesn't seem to be a clear consensus on the total number of learning styles, anyway.

 

Information Search Model

     In order to research brain development in early childhood, I chose to utilize the Metacognition Theory. Metacognition is the ability to use prior knowledge to plan a strategy for approaching a learning task, take necessary steps to problem solve, reflect on and evaluate results, and modify one’s approach as needed. Metacognition refers to one's awareness of and ability to regulate one's own thinking.It includes knowing when and where to use particular strategies for learning and problem solving as well as how and why to use specific strategies. Metacognition is grounded in constructivist theory.

Brain Development in Early Childhood

      As a trainer for early childhood educators, I am constantly on the look out for relevant material for trainings. I am especially interested in brain development in early childhood. People are sometimes unaware of  the importance of early experiences in establishing a solid foundation for successful academic progress later in life. Unfortunately, opportunities are missed or actual damage has been done by the time they find out. I would like to minimize or eliminate those situations if I can.