Infant Development-Building the Brain

Infant Development- Building the Brain

As you learned in Module 1, we do not come preassembled, and the relationships with our parents and caregivers help to build the architecture of our brains. In the first three years of life there is unparalleled growth in all areas of a babies brain. Babies are born with 100 billion neurons, but none of them are wired together yet. By age three, 80% of the brain will be wired up with over 100 trillion connections. A babies early experiences and environment will dictate the connections and allow the infant to begin to make sense of the world around them. By age 5, any neurological connections that are not used or reinforced will naturally be pruned (discarded) by the brain.

There are some key parts of the basic architecture of the brain that are important to know when learning about early brain development. The first is the limbic system. The limbic system is a part of the brain that regulates emotions and memory. This area of the brain is where we register the value and emotional meaning of sensory and affective information. Every sensory experience we have is also accompanied by an emotional experience, either positive or negative. It is these emotional experiences that help create and reinforce neural connections. The limbic system connects the lower and higher brain functions and is often called “the emotional brain”. It is made up of the Thalamus, Hypothalamus , Cingulate gyrus, Amygdala , Hippocampus and Basal Ganglia.

The second key part is the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is the executive function of the brain. It works to inhibit our behaviors and helps us organize our emotional experiences. This part of the brain is developed throughout childhood and into early adulthood and influences behavior and emotional regulation.

The following video from The Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University helps us imagine the level of neuronal activity as we think about early development.

Video 1: “Experiences that Build Brain Architecture”

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