Chapter 3: Brain Development
Overview
A baby is eating breakfast and drops their spoon from the highchair tray. The adult nearby picks it up and places it back on the tray with a smile and kind word. The baby looks at the adult and then the spoon, picks it up and drops it onto the floor again. The adult laughs and picks the spoon up, replacing it on the tray as they gently smooth down the baby’s hair. This interaction happens three more times. The adult recognizes the child’s need for repetition of this cause and effect activity and gladly participates in the back and forth game. It is a game that is building a healthy brain.
A clear understanding of brain development helps adults support healthy brain growth in the children they live and work with. Studying the brain gives us a better understanding of children’s development, differing abilities, and it guides us in improving programs and policies impacting children and families.
This chapter will explore current information on how the brain develops and what is required to keep it healthy. It will also explore functions of brain regions in a typically developing brain and the impact of trauma and stress. Finally, this chapter addresses applications of brain development to the field of early childhood education. The science of brain development is constantly changing, and teachers should strive to stay abreast of current research by visiting reliable websites such as the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University or the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington.
Objectives
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
- Identify basic anatomy of the brain.
- Explain how neurons connect to create pathways in the brain.
- Describe how early experiences impact brain development.
- Examine the role of brain development in early childhood education.
- Describe the elements a child needs to develop a healthy brain.
Key Terms
- ACEs–Adverse Childhood Experiences
- Amygdala
- Axon
- Boundaries
- Brainstem and midbrain
- Cell Body
- Cerebellum
- Compassion Fatigue
- Cortex
- Cortical Modulation
- Cortisol
- Co-regulating
- Dendrite
- Distress
- Emotional Intelligence
- Enriched Environment
- Eustress
- Frontal lobe
- Glial Cell
- Limbic system
- Mindfulness
- Myelin
- Neuron
- Neurotransmitters
- Occipital lobe
- Parietal lobe
- Plasticity
- Prefrontal lobe
- Resilience
- Plasticity
- Pruning
- Serve and Return
- Stress
- Synaptic Gap
- Temporal lobe
- Thalamus
- Toxic Stress
- Vagus Nerve
- Window of Opportunity
Attributions
- Chapter opening image: image by National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health in the Public Domain; The NIH Image Gallery on Flickr provides images that are free to use with credit. Materials produced by federal agencies are in the public domain.
- Figure 3.1: human-brains by @Peta de Aztlan is released under CC BY 2.0
