A child’s brain develops from the basic core, action, or reptilian brain, to the limbic, old mammalian or felling brain, to the thought brain or neocortex. There are sensitive windows in brain development when the stimulus, such as conversation with parents, must be present for the capacity of, say, language to develop. Young brains are also very plastic, with potential for making vast numbers of dendritic connections. This fades at 10-11 years of age.
The action brain processes sense impressions, controls movement, monitors body functions, mangers reflexes, and helps our physical survival.
The limbic, feeling brain responds with ‘fight or flight’ to threats, so humans react emotionally and physically before we have time to think in a crisis. The limbic brain enfolds the actions brain, processing emotional in formations such as likes and dislikes. It gives meaning to our experiences and learning, influencing behaviours and intimate relationships. It allows us to dream, fantasize and experience intuitions and feelings, stimulated by the neocortex or thinking brain.
The felling brain is a bridge between the thought brain and the action brain-so in an emergency the action brain takes over the higher functions. A feature of the action and felling brains is that they are unable to distinguish between a real or an imagined sense impression- hence they react first, and think later.
The neocortex or thought brain takes time to develop- it is five times the size of the other two brains combined. Its tasks are thinking, intellect, creativity, and calculation. The thinking brain receives sensory input from the action and feeling brains, but needs time to process information. The thinking brain is the vehicle for our experiences, perceptions, memories, feelings, and thinking. So we can form out ideas and actions.
The child’s brain is progressively mylenated, in a process that begins with the action brain and ends with the neocortex. Mylenation covers the nerve dendrites and axons with a protective sheath of fatty acids. The more the nerve pathways are used, the more they are mylenated. The thicker the sheath, the faster the nerve impulse travels along the pathways. So young children’s motor sensory pathways and sense need stimulation for mylenation to occur -e.g. as in rhythm games and movement.
The senses need stimulating and nurturing, but they also require protection from over-or inappropriate stimulation, as young children are like sponges. It takes time to develop the capacity for screening out unpleasant sense experience, as young children are receptive to what they hear, see, touch, smell and taste. So just consider the extent to which the electronic media are over-stimulating for children’s delicate senses, and how the TV/brain phenomenon works even more strongly with children than with adults.
The Reticular Activating System (RAS) of the lower brain develops with the senses. The RAS is the focus and gateway of the different sense impressions, so that they are co-ordinated and can then be processed by the thought brain. The RAS enables us to give attention, to focus awareness, so that if the motor sensory pathways are poorly developed, this may lead to children having short attentions spans and a poor ability to concentrate. Too much or too little simulation of the sense, together with underdeveloped fine and gross motor skills, can lead to poor attention.
The action and feeling brains are 80% mylenated by the age of 4. Brain development at 6-7 then moves on to the thought brain, the neocortex, with mylenation starting first on the right hemisphere, and then on the left. The right side helps process images, shapes, patterns an sees the picture than detail. It is more intuitive, and is active in art, music, and colour. As the right brain responds to colour and novelty, it therefore becomes dominate when watching TV.
The left hemisphere leads when a child thinks, reads, writes and speaks. It underpins analysis, sequential thinking, and step-by-step logic, later developing into the abstract thinking needed the letters of the alphabet to the sounds and the meaning.
As children develop, the two hemispheres develop interconnections via the corpus callosum. This is a large bundle of nerve pathways which acts as bridge, helping the coordination of the left and right sides of the body. The mylenation of the corpus callosum is helped by the development of gross motor skills- so running, exercises, singing games, jumping, and so on are all helpful here. The fine motor skills are also important for mylenation, with crafts, cooking, knitting, drawing, and painting. Such activities facilitate he development of flexibility, creativity, playing with ideas, imagination, and the interaction of intuitive an analytical thinking. The impaired development of corpus callosum could affect the healthy interaction of the two hemispheres and could therefore be a cause of learning difficulties.
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