A Highly Predictable Trajectory of Brain Development

The trajectory of brain development through childhood is so predictable that scientists can estimate a child's age within a year, using brain structure revealed in brain scans.

The group performed structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) on the young peoples' brains. The images showed features such as the size of each brain region, the level of connectivity between neurons, and how much white matter was insulating the neurons. By putting all these features together in an algorithm, the researchers formed a picture of what the average brain looks like at each year of childhood. Different areas and features of the brain varied between individuals, but the algorithm correctly predicted a child's age to within a year in 92 per cent of cases. Brown says this suggests that brain anatomy is a developmental clock of which we were unaware. _NewScientist

Journal Abstract from Current Biology

Brain development begins early, inside the womb. After birth the brain continues to add neurons and connections rapidly, then begins to prune back and refine neuronal connections in the toddler years.

The pattern of brain myelination -- or the adding of insulation to nerve fibres -- occurs from the back of the brain to the front of the brain, over a period of between 20 and 30 years. Teenagers lack full development and use of the pre-frontal lobes of the brain, for example, which contributes to impulsivity and lack of sound judgment.

As new structures and connections grow and mature, the developing brain passes through "critical developmental periods," which seem to allow especially rapid skills formation for the particular circuits which mature, or come online. In other words, newly functional brain circuits appear to be particularly "plastic" when they first develop and mature.

Understanding this trajectory of brain development should help anyone who deals with children to see that children are not simply "little adults." Depending upon the age, children are quite different creatures altogether than an adult's daily work or recreational companions.

Brain imaging is providing powerful tools to understand the dynamics of brain structure and brain function. We should expect many of our conventional prejudices about the brain to be overturned in the near future.

We Are All Cyborgs Now: Getting to Genuine Convergence

Brain Riken Research
Convergent technology refers to the combination of multiple functions into a single device. Consider a computer pad which might be used for web browsing, as a video camera, as a game player, a communications device, a media player, a book reader, a data archiver, a photo album, and so on. With enough storage, a person could download much of his life onto an inexpensive handheld device, for easy reference. Useful for those with memory problems, and for everyone else as well.

But I am referring to a higher order of convergence and interactivity, which approaches the level of cyborg augmented reality. Let's use some recent research from Stanford as a springboard into the concept:

Ian Gotlib's group at Stanford University, California, studies girls aged 10 to 14 years whose mothers suffer from depression. Such girls are thought to be at higher-than-normal risk of developing the condition themselves, in part because they may inherit their mothers' tendency to "amplify" unpleasant information. Although none of the girls has yet experienced a depressive episode, Gotlib has found that their brains already overreact to negative emotional stimuli – a pattern they share with their mothers and other depressed people.


Gotlib is studying whether these young subjects can use interactive software and brain-imaging hardware to "rewire" their brains by unlearning this negative bias. In a pilot experiment, eight girls used a neural feedback display to learn how to control activity in a network of interrelated brain regions that have been linked to depression – these include the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.


The level of activity in this network was measured using an functional MRI scan and displayed to the girls in the form of a thermometer on a computer screen. The girls were shown sad or negative pictures that might ordinarily raise their "temperature", and tried to lower that "temperature" by adopting more sanguine mental states. They were then advised to try to recreate that mindset in their daily lives.


A control group unknowingly watched someone else's scan output instead of their own, so they didn't actually learn how to control their brain activity. _NewScientist

An interesting setup, using fMRI neurofeedback. But the researchers went further, and tested another group of girls with a much simpler setup to see how the two approaches would compare.

Another set of girls in the pilot experiment received their training through a simple computer game instead. In this game, a pair of faces appeared on a screen every few seconds: they would be either neutral and sad, or neutral and happy. Then a dot replaced one of the faces, and the "game" was to click on the dot. For the eight girls in the control group, the face replaced by the dot was selected at random, but for eight girls in the experimental group, the dot always replaced the more positive face in the pair. Over a week of playing this game daily, these girls were in effect being trained to avoid looking at the sad faces.


Gotlib himself originally found this concept, called attentional-bias training, so simplistic that he bet Colin MacLeod, a psychologist at the University of Western Australia in Perth who pioneered the technique, that it would not alter psychological symptoms. Gotlib lost his bet.


In his pilot study, both kinds of training significantly reduced stress-related responses – for example, increases in heart rate, blood pressure and cortisol levels – to negative stimuli. These stress responses are a key marker of depression, and they diminished one week after training. The girls in the experimental groups also developed fewer defensive responses to negative faces, such as startled blinking. Control groups showed no such improvement.


...Gotlib is adding more subjects to the training programme and plans to compare their long-term mental health with a parallel cohort of 200 girls, half of whom have depressed mothers, who aren't participating in the study.


He presented his results at the annual meeting of the Society for Research in Psychopathology in Boston in September. _NS

A simple computer game is much less expensive than a huge fMRI machine. And it would be easier to incorporate into one's pad computer as well. Of course, EEG neurofeedback would serve as well for this purpose as fMRI, and EEG could be incorporated into a pad computer. Can you see the convergence beginning to form?

This type of research could easily lead to much broader applications which could detect when we started to fall into a dysfunctional mental feedback loop, and provide timely stimuli which lead us back toward our predetermined goals. Why might we need such devices? Why not just use willpower and heightened consciousness instead?

The many functions where a human brain is superior to a computer depend upon the way that the brain is wired, and how the different parts of the brain communicate. This is virtually all below the level of consciousness, making us largely subconscious machines -- or zombies -- in many of our most important aspects. But ironically enough, by becoming more cyborg-like, we may be able to become less zombie-like.

Brain-computer interfaces (BCI) are typically thought of in terms of helping persons to either compensate for neurological deficits such as stroke or paraplegia, or to rehabilitate from neurological damage. BCIs are also beginning to be utilised in the gaming world, to provide more intuitive game playing. We can also expect much more use of BCIs in the educational environment, for enhanced learning.

It is difficult to explain the explosively revolutionary impact of this type of technology, when used as neurofeedback for learning, mood enhancement, creative invention, mental focus, relaxation, and social interaction. You may think that intervention with such hyper-convergent technology would begin sometime after the birth of a child, but you would probably be wrong.

Once humans discover the revolutionary impact of hyper-convergent computing and BCIs on child raising outcomes, for large segments of the population there will be no going back. Why? Because it is almost inevitable that new, previously unknown critical developmental windows will be discovered, for high level skills that are currently developed only by accident. These windows will be discovered because the new BCIs will not simply be passive monitoring and feedback devices, but will also be "mental probes" using various modalities. You never know what is there until you go in and look.

This is very dangerous territory, where angels fear to tread. But then, as we approach cyborg-hood, we may find ourselves further away from angelhood. Heightened awareness, knowledge, and competence tend to lead us to test ourselves to greater extremes. Some of the things we try may go catastrophically wrong. We have to accept that in advance and take appropriate precautions as we proceed.

One of the greatest dangers is the danger of losing something essential, something perceptive and wise which keeps us from making fatal mistakes, and from falling into traps and wasting time on dead end enterprises. We could easily grow so dependent upon our machine alter egos that we lose much of our natural strength and competence.

That is why the great majority of humans will remain as a control group. At least at first. It will be difficult to keep persons from adopting a technology which may give them an advantage in life outcome, and which is likely to become both widely available and inexpensive, over time.

In addition, periodic mandatory periods of going "offline" would force us to reclaim our "naked human abilities." Failing to take such precautions could leave us extremely vulnerable to an unexpected failure of our technology.

A recent posting here looked at a program for developing a platform for "rebooting civilisation" in case of catastrophic failure. A simple BCI system would make it much easier to build and maintain these essential machines of basic civilisation. BCIs and wearable computers / data archives, could be stored in secure caches, safe from natural and man-made disaster. A primitive version of that idea was presented in the Niven - Pournelle SF novel, "Lucifer's Hammer," where the astrophysicist character stored a precious collection of reference books in a safe and secure cache -- the books were later used to help reboot civilisation. You can imagine how much more effective full sensory neurofeedback BCI archiving would be.

It may seem a long distance from the Stanford research above to the lifelong cyborg existence described. But it is mostly a matter of engineering and experimentation. When Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates, Ted Hoff, Robert Noyce, and so many others laid the foundation for cheap, ubiquitous computing, the djinn was already out of the bottle.

Is It Possible to Raise the Verbal IQ of Children Using Cartoons?

The cognitive benefit was striking and consistent in 90% of the children who took the four-week learning program and was additionally confirmed by brain imaging data that indicated brain changes had taken place related to the training.

“Our data have confirmed a rapid transfer of cognitive benefits in young children after only 20 days of training on an interactive, music-based cognitive training program. The strength of this effect in almost all of the children was remarkable,” said Dr. Moreno, a world expert on neuroeducation. He is now the Lead Scientist at Baycrest’s Centre for Brain Fitness. _Baycrest

York University (Canada) scientists claim that it is possible to raise the verbal IQ of pre-schoolers using cartoons with music. The animations are actually music-based cognitive training sessions, which the scientists say can raise verbal IQ over a period of roughly 20 days.

In the study, 48 pre-schoolers four to six years of age participated in computer-based, cognitive training programs that were projected on a large classroom wall and featured colorful, animated cartoon characters delivering the lessons. The children were divided into two groups. One group received music-based, cognitive training that involved a combination of motor, perceptual and cognitive tasks, and included training on rhythm, pitch, melody, voice and basic musical concepts. The other group received visual art training that emphasized the development of visuo-spatial skills relating to concepts such as shape, color, line, dimension and perspective.

Each group received two training sessions of one-hour duration each day in classroom, over four weeks, led by instructors at The Royal Conservatory in Toronto.

Researchers tested the children for verbal and spatial intelligence before and after the training using the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (Third Edition). The team also conducted brain imaging using non-invasive electroencephalography (EEG) which measures the time course of brain activity.

The verbal IQ tests assessed the children’s attention, word recall and ability to analyze information and solve problems using language-based reasoning. Brain imaging enabled researchers to detect if functional brain changes had occurred related to the cognitive training. When the children were re-tested five to 20 days after the end of the training programs, researchers did not find any significant increase in verbal intelligence or brain changes for the children who participated in the visual art training module. However, they found quite a different result in the children who took the music-based, cognitive training. Ninety percent of those children exhibited intelligence improvements – five times larger than the other group – on a measure of vocabulary knowledge, as well as increased accuracy and reaction time. The music group also showed brain changes that co-related to their enhanced cognitive performance.

“The results of this study strongly affirm the resonance between music and child development, and encourage us to think of music not just as a medium or tool through which treatment might be delivered, but as the treatment itself,” said Dr. Chau, a Senior Scientist at Bloorview Research Institute and Canada Research Chair in Paediatric Rehabilitation Engineering.

...The findings have exciting implications for conceptualizing and improving neuroeducation programs for children of all ages, and potentially for older adults.

...The study – conducted at York University by Dr. Sylvain Moreno, who is now with Baycrest’s Rotman Research Institute (RRI) – is posted online today in Psychological Science (a journal of the Association for Psychological Science), ahead of print publication in the October issue of the journal _Baycrest

h/t Machineslikeus

This type of training is suitable for homeschool or online use. Below is a video with more information from one of the scientists involved in such research:

The brains of preschool children are particularly changeable. Besides helping children to learn better, it is also the goal of the researchers is to use similar approaches to helping older people to sustain the brain function that they have.

Training programs which seem to improve cognition in young children do not always provide lasting benefits over the lifetime. We need to develop training not only for early childhood cognitive enhancement, but also for reinforcers which maintain the benefits of cognitive training throughout childhood, adolescence and into adulthood.

Certain types of cognitive skills must be acquired by a certain age, or they are probably lost for life. This is true for language learning, and is also quite likely true for advanced musical ability and perhaps advanced mathematical ability.

Bottom line: We are clearly failing our children in terms of early childhood training. But we can fix that, if we try. We are also failing our children in terms of later childhood competency and character development. That will be harder to fix, since so much of the problem is tied into the dominant culture of political correctness.

Young Children Need Basic Concepts to Build Upon

A recent study from the University of Missouri's David Geary, provides some suggestions for better preparing young children for later study in mathematics:

Numbers, counting, and low-level arithmetic are three basic competencies that are vital to later success in math, and students should have these key math skills in first grade in order to be successful in math in fifth grade, according to a long-term study released by psychologists at the University of Missouri (UM).

“Math is critical for success in many fields, and the United States is not doing a great job of teaching math,” David Geary, UM’s Curator’s Professor of Psychological Sciences, who led the research team, said in a statement. “In order to improve basic instruction, we have to know what to instruct.”

Researchers monitored 177 elementary students from 12 different elementary schools from kindergarten to fifth grade, and intend to continue monitoring them through high school. Students who understood the number line and some basic math facts in the beginning of first grade showed faster growth in math skills over the next five years.

“It is important that children understand the meaning of Arabic numerals, that is, the quantities they represent and be able to quickly translate quantities into numerals and numerals into quantities. [The study] also highlights the importance of knowing basic facts and the number line,” Geary said. _eschoolnews

The longitudinal study by the University of Missouri referred to above, which will follow 177 students from kindergarten through high school, may well provide learning specialists and psychologists with much valuable information on how to help students learn math and other important topics. But it is important that the researchers remove as many possible confounders as possible before drawing any conclusions. IQ, SES, EF, and other confounding factors might easily be ignored by some researchers. David Geary is a top psychologist, however, and is not likely to overlook such basic concepts in the planning and data analysis phases.

There are a large number of free online helper sites which provide exposure to these basic math concepts. For example, Visual Math Learning provides a number of basic lessons in the very topics highlighted by the study. Lessons in natural numbers, counting, and a number of lessons in low level arithmetic are all provided free of charge.

The Khan Academy is a most helpful online math learning site which provides lessons from very basic levels to far more advanced areas of math.

Math is a lot more than numbers, counting, and simple arithmetic, of course. The understanding of all sorts of dynamic patterns and relationships in the modern world require some level of math learning. Very young minds can be prepared for many of these advanced concepts merely by exposure -- just as very young minds which are exposed to languages are better prepared to use languages as they mature.

The longitudinal U. Missouri study discussed above will be helpful, but a lot more is needed. Although we have a rough idea of the time frame for developmental windows in the learning of language and the training of executive function, we have far less understanding of the timing of developmental windows for later intuitive understanding of advanced math concepts, or world class musical abilities. It is likely that the best of the best were given early starts, but how early, and what type of start is best? No one knows.

It is important that a civilisation whose future existence of abundant prosperity is dependent upon the skillful use of advanced mathematical concepts, learns to train its young to develop these skills at the most advantageous times.

When Is a Child's Brain Ready for Maths?

The newest study examined 90 children recruited from a variety of schools. Half had just completed second grade; the other half had just completed third grade. All children had normal intelligence and had math reasoning scores between the 25th and 98th percentile. On average, the third-graders were one year older than the second-graders and had significantly better math-reasoning skills.

...The scientists found that children in third grade showed much more differentiated brain responses between complex and simple problems. They found significant change in the responses of two key regions of the brain to the different types of addition problems.Greater responses to complex addition problems were seen in third-graders’ brains in both the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a brain area responsible for manipulating information in working memory, and in the intraparietal sulcus, a posterior brain region essential for representing numerical quantity. _Vinod Menon et al described in Physorg

MyNextBrain_Taken from Brain Age PDF
It appears that significant changes in brain function occur in children sometime between grades 2 and 3, measured by fMRI. At least some of these changes in brain activity appear to allow more sophisticated maths reasoning in children.

Compared to 2nd graders, 3rd graders showed greater activity in dorsal stream parietal areas right SPL, IPS and angular gyrus (AG) as well as ventral visual stream areas bilateral lingual gyrus (LG), right lateral occipital cortex (LOC) and right parahippocampal gyrus (PHG). Significant differences were also observed in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), with 3rd graders showing greater activation in left dorsal lateral PFC (dlPFC) and greater deactivation in the ventral medial PFC (vmPFC). Third graders also showed greater functional connectivity between the left dlPFC and multiple posterior brain areas, with larger differences in dorsal stream parietal areas SPL and AG, compared to ventral stream visual areas LG, LOC and PHG. No such between-grade differences were observed in functional connectivity between the vmPFC and posterior brain regions. These results suggest that even the narrow one-year interval spanning grades 2 and 3 is characterized by significant arithmetic task-related changes in brain response and connectivity, and argue that pooling data across wide age ranges and grades can miss important neurodevelopmental changes. _Abstract Menon et al via ScienceDirect

It is likely that another similar maths-facilitating change occurs during puberty, at least partially triggered by testosterone surge. Understanding these age specific developmental brain changes is critical to the study of group differences and the efficacy of interventions in maths learning.

Abstract from an earlier collaboration between David Geary and Vinod Menon dealing with counting and retrieval strategies in early maths learning.

Modern high tech societies are based upon technologies which require sophisticated maths skills. Various commercial methods from maths learning have been developed in an attempt to assure a plentiful supply of talent for engineering and science training programs of the future. Most of these programs fail to compensate for the huge weaknesses of the government educational system as a whole, which limits their usefulness.

Music learning is another activity which displays a developmental learning window in childhood, at least for highly proficient musical skills and abilities. Not coincidentally, musical skills and math skills overlap significantly. This interesting study looks at brain networks in music, and how they come into play during everyday "segmentation of the neural stream." In other words, good and timely early childhood training in language, maths, music -- and probably many other skills not properly delineated -- can make a crucial difference in the skillful execution of ordinary moment to moment thinking processes.

This page links to a sophisticated analysis (PDF Thesis Download 6MB) of fMRI analysis of mental patterns from a whole-brain spatio-temporal perspective. Only for those most curious.

Modern educators and neuroscientists do not actually understand how children learn, nor do they know the best ways of assisting children in the crucial learning processes. In fact, modern educational practises are so infused with politicised dogma and indoctrination, that a mainstream education is apt to do as much harm as good in the average student.

If you are the parent of a young or adolescent child, DO NOT LEAVE your child's education up to the system. To you, your child is your life. To the system, your child is a statistic, prone to currents of political favouritism and neglect.

Literacy Rates, the Flynn Effect, Brain Wiring, Tautologies

In a recent look at the Flynn Effect, we at Al Fin neglected to mention one of the possible important contributors to at least part of the changes in IQ test scores observed over the 20th century: changes in literacy rates.

World Literacy 1900s
In a trivial sense, if a test-taker is unable to read and understand the directions for taking the test, his test score would not be valid. IQ Corner blog presents an interesting discussion about the possible relationship between the Flynn Effect and literacy rates.

The importance of being able to read for performance on an IQ test cannot be understated. Instead of measuring ‘intelligence' in a nonliterate test-taker, the test is measuring that person's inability to read....If increasing literacy were really explaining a number of seemingly different IQ trends, then you would expect to see a few things. First, within a population you should expect increased education of literacy skills to be associated with an increase in the average IQ of that population. Second, IQ gains should be most pronounced in the lower half of the IQ bell curve since this is the section of the population that prior to the education would have obtained relatively lower scores due to their inability to comprehend the intelligence test's instructions. With increased literacy, you should expect to see a change in the skewness of the IQ distribution from positive to negative as a result of higher rates of literacy in the lower half of the IQ distribution (but very little change in the top half of the distribution). You should also expect to see differences on the particular intelligence test subscales, with increased literacy showing the strongest effects on verbal tests of intelligence and minimal differences on other tests of intelligence.

...To test these predictions, Marks looked at samples representative of whole populations (rather than individuals), and used ecological methods to calculate statistical associations between IQ and literacy rates across different countries. Were Marks' findings consistent with the predictions?

Strikingly, yes. He found that the higher the literacy rate of a population, the higher that population's mean IQ, and the higher that population's mean IQ, the higher the literacy rate of that population. When literacy rates declined, mean IQ also declined. Marks also found evidence for unequal improvements across the entire IQ spectrum: the greatest effects of increased literacy rates were on those in the lower half of the IQ distribution. Interestingly, he also found that both the Flynn Effect and racial/national IQ differences showed the largest effects of literacy on verbal tests of intelligence, with the perceptual tests of intelligence showing no consistent pattern.

It must be noted that literacy wasn't the only factor responsible for the Flynn effect. Adopting the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (C-H-C) framework (McGrew, 2005, 2009) Marks found that Visual processing (Gv) and Processing Speed (Gs) also made important contributions. _IQCorner

Recent research suggests that learning to read actually changes the physical structure of the brain, and consequently brain activity and processing. If that is the case, then the effect of literacy on IQ scores may extend far beyond the ability to understand the test instructions.

Reading and writing are cognitive tools that, once acquired, change the way in which the brain memorizes facts and conceptualizes ideas, and these changes stimulate abstract thinking. When psychologists use neuroimaging technology, like MRI, to compare the brains of literates and illiterates working on a task, they find many differences in how their brains work whether or not they are reading. Researcher Alexandre Castro-Caldas discovered that processing between the hemispheres of the brain was different between those who could read and those who could not. A key part of the corpus callosum was thicker in literates, and "the occipital lobe processed information more slowly in individuals who learned to read as adults compared to those who learned at the usual age." Psychologists Ostrosky-Solis, Garcia and Perez tested literates and illiterates with a battery of cognitive tests while measuring their brain waves and concluded that "the acquisition of reading and writing skills has changed the brain organization of cognitive activity in general… not only in language but also in visual perception, logical reasoning, remembering strategies, and formal operational thinking." Literacy — a human invention — rewires the human mind. _The Technium

Kelly goes on to point out that the study of music can also alter brain structure and brain function. Then he suggests that the internet and related communication and information technologies may be causing similar changes in the way the brain is wired, thus changing how (and how well) people think.

Children must be exposed to language by a certain age, or they will lose the ability to become skilled in its use -- presumably forfeiting any advantages in brain processing that language confers. The same is true for the timely learning of music, and the skillful development of musical talents. In fact, developmental windows exist for many cognitive skills -- both known and likely unknown (for now) skills.

This raises intriguing questions about what we could be doing -- but aren't -- to facilitate improved thinking skills for our children, and perhaps ourselves. Very few persons, if any, are consistently functioning at their peak cognitive levels. What training methods are we missing which we should be aware of?

As suggested by Castro-Caldas et al. (1998), learning to read and write adds a visuographic dimension, based on operation of matching phonemes and graphemes, to the internal representational system for spoken language, so learning a specific skill during childhood may partially determine the functional organization of the adult brain. _Can Literacy Change Brain Anatomy? Ostrosky-Solis 2004 IJP 39 (1) 27-35

Of course, since reading comprehension is part of what comprehensive IQ tests measure, pointing out that increased literacy rates leads to higher IQ scores is a somewhat tautological -- or circular -- argument. Nevertheless, the human brain is inherently circular in function, and the evidence for a significant change in brain structure due to the acquisition of reading and writing should not be dismissed.

As has been pointed out, the general spread of affluence (in the sense of increased food, education, information technologies, and leisure time) over the 20th century -- at least in the countries and over the time spans registering a significant Flynn Effect -- would lead to a cluster of changes in the pre-natal and post-natal environment of children. Better nutrition, a richer stimulatory environment, increased literacy, better prenatal and childhood medical care, increased exposure to music and music training, etc., could all lead to changes in brain structure and brain function in these upwardly evolving societies.

And yet, it is relatively easy to "cut to the chase" by looking at members of societies who are already at the top of the heap, the affluent socioeconomic classes. By looking at "pre-evolved," already affluent members of a given population group, one can anticipate what the maximum effects of any Flynn Effect are likely to be on a given population.

Rather than to tell you what the results of such studies have been, it might be better to allow you to cogitate on the matter first.

Over time, we are able to incorporate more factors of potential importance into our concepts of the foundations of human cognition. We are stymied by politically correct limitations on what can be studied and tested, but despite the ongoing corruption of science by political correctness, the underlying structures will be worked out piece by piece.

What Compelled 20+ Black Men to Rape One 11 year old Girl?

Gang Rape Suspects
The gang rape allegedly occurred months ago, but is just now hitting the news more widely, due to attempts by NY Times reporters and black activists to make the accused into victims, and the 11 yo victim into the perpetrator.

Steve Sailer takes the NYTimes to task for its one-sided coverage of the story. And for good reason. More from Jezebel.com, which does a better job of covering the story than the NYTimes!

In December, police learned of the assault when an elementary school student told a teacher about a cellphone video featuring one of her classmates. Authorities say that on November 28, the girl was offered a ride by a 19-year-old who took her to his house, then ordered her to take her clothes off, saying she's be beaten if she didn't. She was raped by several men and boys, then moved to the trailer where more assaults occurred as the attackers took cellphone videos and photographs.

The New York Times published a story today about how the case has torn apart the town, and the paper chooses to focus on the plight of the accused men. The author says the town is wondering "how could their young men have been drawn into such an act?" as if they were tricked into gang raping a child. Then there's this quote:

"It's just destroyed our community," said Sheila Harrison, 48, a hospital worker who says she knows several of the defendants. "These boys have to live with this the rest of their lives."

Though, of course, the accused are innocent until proven guilty, it's hard to believe that anyone's first concern would be about how the men will live with what they did. It's even more incredible that the Times decided to include the quote in the story, but it doesn't end there. _Jezebel

Black men commit far more violent crime than men of other races, although the reasons for this difference are not entirely clear. Some attribute the differences to hormonal levels, other focus on low intelligence levels. Al Fin sociologists feel that "a culture of resentment" running rampant inside black communities and cultures is at least partially responsible for high crime rates among black men.

One additional factor which must be discussed is the issue of "impulse control", one part of pre-frontal lobe "executive function." Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi published a detailed look at the relationship between impulse control and crime. It should be noted that executive function -- like IQ -- is highly heritable. It should also be noted that the developmental window for optimising executive function through training, is open between the ages of roughly 4 to 8 years of age. In communities where the illegitimacy rate is roughly 70%, early childhood training is likely to be poor to non-existent.

Here's a quick look at one particular hormone, testosterone:

Take testosterone in a prison. Dabbs' team found that criminal violence and aggressive dominance among women in prison is linked to higher levels of testosterone. An earlier study of male inmates found testosterone levels to be highest among male inmates convicted of violent crimes such as rape, murder and assault. Variables such as age, social factors and other hormones were seen as important in these studies.

Take testosterone and 'delinquency'. Comparing college students with men and women of similar age in a "delinquent urban subculture" (identified as skinheads, bouncers, bartenders, strippers), "delinquents" had higher testosterone levels than college students. (Personally, boxing the range of research subjects into a "delinquent urban subculture" sounds questionable, but anyway...)

Take testosterone in the workplace. Dabbs' team examined the salivary testosterone in seven vocation groups of men, as well as an unemployed group. They found that actors and footy players had higher levels than religious ministers. Dabbs related testosterone to dominance and antisocial tendencies, which in turn, he suggests, effect vocational preferences in subtle ways. Other studies reveal traditional 'white collar' workers possess lower testosterone than traditional 'blue collar' workers. _abc.net

Many more factors are involved, and free testosterone is not the only androgenic hormone in circulation. In addition, androgenic receptors come in different types, and different receptor types may influence behavioural reaction to any given testosterone level differently.

We know from examples such as the Wichita Massacre and the Knoxville Horror, that there is almost certainly an element of racial hatred involved when such gang rapes are combined with murder. Young women students who are raped and murdered on and near college campuses in American cities are often the victim of whatever combination of racial hatred, hormonal imbalance, low impulse control, and low intelligence which may drive young black male crime.

In the case of the young Texas girl, at least she was not murdered. I am personally more concerned about her future welfare than that of the rapists. It is true, however that society is going to have to live with these bad boys for many years. So it would be best for society to stop covering up this type of crime, stop making excuses for the perpetrators, and get to the bottom of what is driving this all-too-common type of interracial crime.

More: Here is the NYTimes story about the gang rape, published about 3 months after the assault, written more like a PC cover-up than a belated news report. Contrast this excuse-making "coverage" with the unrelenting attacks by the NYT against the Duke lacrosse team players who were later found innocent of all charges against them.

Update -- 14March2011 -- Meanwhile in Sweden: 20 Muslim Immigrants Gang Rape 11 yo Swedish Girl and Gang Rape and Genocide in Cote d'Ivoire and on it goes in ghetto after township after shanty town

Automatic Expertise Grows with Time and Training

Wikipedia
The human brain learns a lot, over time. Experience shapes the brain, determining how it will work, and which parts of the brain will be active in different circumstances. With training, many parts of the brain learn to function more quickly and efficiently to perform particular tasks in a more expert manner. But this training must be intense enough, and take place early enough in life -- before the developmental windows close -- for the skills to become automatic at expert levels.

Recent Japanese brain research has determined that expert players in the Japanese chess game "Shogi" use different parts of their brain (the caudate nucleus among others) to play, than do amateurs of the game. The caudate nucleus is the curved purple structure in the image above.

Neuroscientists at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Wako, Japan, studied a group of professional and amateur shogi players. Shogi is the Japanese version of chess. With the use of real-time brain scans, the researchers discovered that the pros activated different parts of their brains than the amateurs did while studying game patterns and contemplating their next moves.

The findings were published in the Jan. 21 issue of Science.

Senior study author Keiji Tanaka, deputy director of the institute and head of the Cognitive Brain Mapping Laboratory, said the experts' unique brain circuitry enabled them to have "superior intuitive problem-solving capabilities."

Professional shogi players, who have practiced three or four hours a day for several years, "repeatedly note that the best next move comes to their mind 'intuitively,'" the authors wrote. "Being 'intuitive' indicates that the idea for a move is generated quickly and automatically without conscious search, and the process is mostly implicit."

... brain difference occurred when the players were forced to quickly pick their next best move. The professionals' brain scans revealed activity in a portion of the basal ganglion known as the caudate nucleus, while the amateurs' scans did not.

The researchers suggest that a unique circuit between these two regions of the brain is what enables professional players to expertly recognize board game patterns and quickly choose their optimal next move.

"There was no volume difference of the caudate nucleus between professional and amateur players," said Tanaka. This suggests that "the caudate nucleus is used for other purposes in ordinary people [but] the experts have developed a unique way to use the system." _BW_via_ImpactLab

The caudate nucleus has been implicated in the development of automaticity of several types -- which places the caudate in a central, pivotal position for humans living in modern societies.

First, the caudate appears to be involved in the acquired automaticity of motor skills. This is not such a big surprise to brain researchers. But the caudate also seems to be involved in the automaticity of emotional processing, the automaticity of perceptual categorisation (PDF), automaticity of rule-based categorisation, and in switching between two languages in bilingual individuals. There are almost certainly more caudate functions to come.

Sure, there is overlap between the different caudate functions, but the brain -- and its many modular parts -- is nothing if not multi-functional. A Swiss Army knife of cognitive and emotional tools that modifies itself over a person's lifetime, adapting to the individual's experience.

That is why it is so important to the individual that the brain's many potential functions be developed before their developmental windows close. And why it is so important to society that the brains of its members are well developed and long-lived.

We cannot afford to waste all of that hard-earned knowledge, experience, and savvy by dying too young. 500 year lifespans should be seen as a minimum timespan for skills acquisition and for passing these skills along to future generations.

Taken from an article on Al Fin Longevity

Thinking in Space, Time, and Body

When shown movies of two snails crawling along parallel paths for different distances or amounts of time, children judged the amount of time a snail took to make its trip based on how far the snail went. That's a sign that the concept of time grows out of spatial knowledge, researchers propose. In this movie clip, young volunteers watched a blue snail crawl a longer distance over a shorter time span than a red snail. _ SN

To probe the relationship between space and time in the developing mind, Daniel Casasanto of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and colleagues at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and Stanford University showed children movies of two snails racing along parallel paths for different distances or durations. The children judged either the spatial or temporal aspect of each race, reporting which animal went for a longer distance or a longer time.

When asked to judge distance, children had no trouble ignoring time. But when asked to judge time, they had difficulty ignoring the spatial dimension of the event. Snails that moved a longer distance were mistakenly judged to have traveled for a longer time. Children use physical distance to measure of the passage of time. _AlphaGalileo

The new investigation was conducted by a team of researchers based at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, who were led by expert Daniel Casasanto. The group collaborated closely with colleagues based at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in Greece, and also the Stanford University, in the United States. During the experiments, children were asked to watch animated videos of races between snails, each of the animals located on its own track. The races went on over various distances and durations, and the children were then asked to tell researchers the distance each had traveled. _ Softpedia

This study was conducted with 99 children ages 4 to 10. According to the authors, children of all ages studied were unable to separate the time judgment from the distance traveled by the snail. The author's suggest that children possess deep conceptual links between time and space.

The study was conducted using Greek-speaking children. In the Greek language it is possible to discuss time without using spatial metaphors such as "long" or "short", which are used routinely in English when referring to time spans. (the word span itself is a spatial metaphor) By using Greek speakers, the scientists believe that they side-stepped issues of superficial language metaphorical conceptual conflation.

This Greek-German-American study brings up some interesting issues dealing with metaphorical underpinnings of thought and concepts. When different concepts are inextricably linked -- even beneath the level of spoken and written language -- we are still dealing with metaphors. But these metaphors are pre-verbal, vestigial residues of pre-verbal mental development.

If pre-adolescent children cannot conceptualise time without utlising spatial concepts, they are using pre-verbal metaphors of space to construct time concepts. This apparently occurs automatically and unconsciously.

It will take time to trace the issue to earlier stages of development, since at this time some level of language development appears necessary in order to assess the nature and direction of the child's conceptual linkage.

Such an obstruction will not impede the pursuit of such questions for long.

The Connections Behind Concept Formation

The human brain never rests. It constantly compares patterns and attempts to determine the relevance of sense clusters. We like to think we understand "the difference that makes a difference." Since we think in terms of concepts, metaphors, models, and emotion-tinged intuitions, it is important that they be laid down as soundly as possible -- from top to bottom.

...while there is little doubt that humans form and use concepts all the time, very little is known about how conceptual knowledge is created in the brain or how it allows us to make efficient choices.

Now, Dr Kumaran and colleagues have used behavioural and neuroimaging techniques to reveal how this knowledge emerges in the human brain, and how it is used to guide decision making. The results of the study, which was funded by the Wellcome Trust, are published in the journal 'Neuron'.

In the study, 25 volunteers were asked to predict whether the weather would be sunny or raining based on the appearance of the night sky. The night sky was represented by patterns on a computer screen. If correct, the participants could win money.

Initially, participants tended to memorise the outcome associated with specific patterns. However, it soon became clear to the participants that groups of patterns were conceptually related - by applying this information, participants were able to solve the task in a different setting where the concepts were similar but the patterns themselves new.

By applying fMRI scanning techniques, which measure changes in blood flow in the brain to identify areas of activity, Dr Kumaran and colleagues were able to show that the emergence of conceptual knowledge was underpinned by a coupled circuit involving the hippocampus (an area of the brain responsible for learning and memory) and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (used in decision-making).

Most significantly, however, the researchers found that activity in the hippocampus alone predicted which participants would be able to successfully apply the concepts they had learned in a new setting. This suggests that the hippocampus creates and stores these concepts, and passes this information to the prefrontal cortex where it can be put to use, for example in making choices where financial reward is at stake.

The results highlight the role of the hippocampus in acquiring new concepts, possibly through its unique networking capacities, which allow multiple memories to be related to one another. _WellcomeTrust

Of course, just because concepts are well formed and accessible, doesn't mean the brain will make use of them at the proper time and place, and in the proper way. A great deal depends upon whether the person is paying attention.

The findings of the Salk researchers, published in the September 24, 2009 issue of the journal Neuron, reveal that the uptick in the firing rate is only a small part of the story. "What we found is that attention also reduces background activity," says postdoctoral researcher and first author Jude Mitchell, Ph.D. "We estimate that this noise reduction increases the fidelity of the neural signal by a factor that is as much as four times as large as the improvement caused by attention-dependent increases in firing rate. This reduction in noise may account for as much as 80% of the attention story." _SD

A very interesting finding. As one of the authors (Reynolds) remarks: we need a much better understanding of the brain's attentional mechanisms.

Some brains are much better at all of this than others, of course. And very few brains are actually trained to reach their potential, in this age of dumbed down curricula and politically correct indoctrination. Yet, it is good for researchers to focus on these critically important areas, so that when society decides that it is serious about meeting the challenges of the future, a new generation of more enlightened educators and scientists can find ways to optimise the brain function of its young persons.

Critical Developmental Periods of Learning

In this very short video, John Abbott discusses the importance of matching the critical learning windows of development to methods of interacting and teaching -- from infancy to adolescence and beyond.

Perhaps the greatest problem with modern affluent societies is their failure to meet the challenge presented by the adolescent developmental period. This failure is manifested by permanently stunted half-adults who never grow beyond quasi-adolescent fads, fashions, and in-group dependencies.

Homeschooling and Home Learning

Impact LabHomeschooling these days has less to do with religion, and more to do with wise parents who want to give their children better opportunities for self-development than government schools are willing to offer.

Home schooling has grown most sharply for higher-income families. In 1999, 63.6% of home-schooling families earned less than $50,000. Now 60.0% earn more than $50,000.

Cate says many highly educated, high-income parents are "probably people who are a little bit more comfortable in taking risks" in choosing a college or line of work. "The attributes that facilitate that might also facilitate them being more comfortable with home-schooling."

Among the other findings:

• 3.9% of white families home-school, up from 2% in 1999.

• 6.8% of college-educated parents home-school, up from 4.9% in 1999.

Michelle Blimes home-schools her three daughters in Orem, Utah. Initially it was for academics, and now she sees social benefits. "They should be able to enjoy playing and being kids before being thrown into the teen culture," Blimes says. _USAToday_via_ImpactLab

Another interesting article on child development from Impact Lab deals with exposure to an "always on" television in early childhood.

Parents talk less to their children if the TV is on and youngsters also speak less, American researchers have found.

A study of children and babies from two-months-old to four-years-old found that for every hour the television was on, parents said between 500 and 1,000 fewer words to their children. _Impactlab

Very young children crave face to face contact with other humans -- particularly their parents. If parents delegate the responsibility of helping the child's mind grow to a television set or other disinterested party, the child is likely to suffer.

The developmental windows of brain development pass very quickly in early childhood. Modern methods of child-raising tend to ignore these passing windows, thus dooming future generations to live as only fractional versions of what they could have been.

Becoming More Fully Human: Music Training

Most children are being short-changed in brain development. Much of the potential of that multifunctional tool for survival -- the human brain -- goes undeveloped due to neglect by parents, teachers, communities, and entire societies. One important human brain function -- emotional competency -- can be more fully incorporated into the developing brain via music training.

Musicians heard an emotion-packed, complex sound with an enhanced sensitivity, and they also were less distracted by simple sounds, according to the study, published in the current issue of the European Journal of Neuroscience.

"What we found in this study is both an enhancement and an economy of resources varies as a function of the extent of musical experience," Kraus said. "The more years the person has been playing an instrument, and the earlier the person began musical training, the larger the effect."

Although many other studies have tried to show the beneficial effects of musical training, the researchers said their findings "provide the first biological evidence for behavioral observations indicating that musical training enhances the perception of vocally expressed emotion." The findings have implications far beyond the world of music.

"The same neural transcription process that is enhanced in musicians is found to be deficient in some children with language disorders such as dyslexia and autism," Kraus noted.

The research suggests that something as basic as musical training may be a useful therapeutic device, along with other more traditional techniques.

..."Our results provide evidence for a subcortical role in the processing of emotional cues by showing that auditory brainstem responses to emotionally salient vocal sounds are dynamic, shaped by life-long, multisensory experience with auditory signals," the researchers note. "These responses are not hardwired but malleable with extensive auditory training."

In other words, we aren't just who we are. We're also what we have done. _ABCNews

The brain goes through very rapid growth and modification in the first few years of life. By the time a child's brain is 5 years old, most of his brain is already shaped by early experiences. But important developmental windows will open and close over the next several years -- and a child's mind is not fully matured until the middle 20s.

We know that infants not exposed to sight or sound in early infancy will lose much of their brain's ability for fine distinction of auditory and optic stimuli if later restored. Children who are not exposed to language in the early years will never develop any language skill. Children not exposed to music before the age of 10 or 12 will find it difficult to achieve mastery from later training. The same opening and closing of developmental windows applies to frontal lobe functioning: the best time to teach a child pre-frontal executive functions that are so vital to life success, is between the ages of 4 and 6-7. Waiting any later will doom a child to lesser degrees of success than he would have otherwise been capable of.

The brain has its own schedule of development and maturation. If caretakers of children are not willing to work within those developmental windows that are constantly opening to some functions and closing to others, too bad for the child.

The Problem With Pot is Who Smokes it When

Using brain scans, researchers found abnormalities in areas of the brain that interconnect brain regions involved in memory, attention, decision-making, language and executive functioning skills. _LS

Image Source

When an adult smokes pot occasionally for relaxation and social bonding, his body and brain are well capable of dealing with the drug effects. But for the still-developing brains of adolescents and young adults, the impact of pot smoking is a bit more complicated. The brain contains abundant cannabinoid receptors, with effects that are still being discovered.

The findings are of particular concern because adolescence is a crucial period for brain development and maturation, the researchers note.

"Studies of normal brain development reveal critical areas of the brain that develop during late adolescence, and our study shows that heavy cannabis use is associated with damage in those brain regions," said study leader Manzar Ashtari of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

The findings are considered preliminary, however, and more research is needed to confirm the work. The results, announced today, were detailed in the Journal of Psychiatric Research last month. _LiveScience

It is quite likely that any developmental effects of cannabinoids on adolescent brains depends upon the specific genetics of the individual in question. Some high school and college students might tolerate cannabinoids well, while other students might find particular career or life pathways aborted or forestalled by early and excessive use of pot. Even in mature adults, marijuana smoking has short and medium term effects that make certain types of reasoning (mathematical and abstract thought) more difficult.

The greatest danger of psychoactive drug use is during the formative periods of brain development. From embryonic development through adolescence and into adulthood, the young brain should be protected from substances that might alter brain development, whenever possible. We are familiar with fetal alcohol syndrome, of coke babies, and of babies born addicted to heroin. But the effects of recreational drugs on the brain development of middle school, high school, and college users has not been well studied.

We do not completely understand the Obama zombie effect, which culminated in the election of a US President completely unqualified to do anything other than vote "present." We have seen how "academic lobotomy" and "psychological neoteny" contributed to the zombification process, but is it not also likely that interference with normal brain development by psychoactive drug use also played a part? Certainly a brain unable to think for itself is more likely to be influenced by media propaganda and zombie peer pressure. The next question to ask: "Is there life after Obama-Zombification?" More on that later.

Brain-Building Through Early Childhood Music

Lately, parents have taken to playing Mozart to their infant children, in hopes that the music will provide an advantage in brain development for the child. Music and math, at least, are related. Many mathematicians are also skilled musicians. The long relationship between music and mathematics apparently runs deep in the structure of the human brain. But to provide a true advantage to the young, growing brain, may require more active participation than merely listening to the music.

Schlaug, now at Harvard Medical School in Boston, and colleagues including Marie Forgeard and Ellen Winner at Boston College, studied 31 children. The researchers collected detailed magnetic resonance images of the children's brains at age 6 and again at 9. Of the original group, six children faithfully practiced at least 2.5 hours a week in the time between the scans. In these budding musicians, a region of the corpus callosum that connects movement-planning regions on the two sides of the brain grew about 25% relative to the overall size of the brain. Children who averaged only an hour or two of weekly practice and those who dropped their instruments entirely showed no such growth. All of the children practiced instruments, such as a piano or a violin, that required two hands.

In every subject, the researchers found that the size of increase in the corpus callosum predicted the improvement on a nonmusical test that required the children to tap out sequences on a computer keyboard. Schlaug says the findings should settle the earlier debate by showing that musical training can enhance neural connections related to planning and coordinating movements between the two hands. His team is now following up with the same children to investigate whether their training had other benefits, such as improved memory or reasoning skills. __Science

Schlaug's findings appear quite significant, and you would expect that 25% growth in the corpus callosum, which connects the two cerebral hemispheres, would contribute to significant differences in other brain functions, and probably behaviours, besides musical performance. It is important to note that both instruments practised by the children required the use of both hands. Other instruments that require complex planning and coordination between the two hands would likely produce similar neuro-structural changes.

Music possesses an inner, mathematical structure. As young brains struggle to reproduce the inner structure of music through practise, is there any doubt but that their brains are changing--modifying themselves--to be better able to instantiate the musical structure through the musical instrument of choice?

The neuroanatomical changes only occurred in children who began regular musical practise before the age of 7, which suggests that an early start on musical training is important for those who eventually are to become virtuosos--for these particular instruments anyway.

The young brain develops along a sequential pathway. Critical periods or windows for different brain functions occur at different points in time. The window for vision is from two months to eight months. The social development and emotional control window is particularly open from ten to eighteen months. The window for math and logical skills is widely open between one and four years, and the window for musical development is between three and ten years--although perhaps one should not wait much beyond the sixth year to start. Source Other sources suggest waiting until five years before intense fingering training on musical instruments begins. Each child's developmental windows will be unique, although they should roughly follow the sequence suggested.

If children are to learn to speak a second language like a native, they should be introduced to the language by age ten. Source for more windows of development According to this source, social developmental windows remain open until ten years, particularly for empathy and envy.

The brain's neural axons myelinate in a roughly back-of-the-brain to front-of-the-brain direction, over the years. Trying to jump-start a particular brain function before the particular nerve pathways are myelinated, may produce less than satisfactory results. The windows of development for thought/emotional/motor skills follow the myelination sequence of the brain.

The pre-frontal lobes are the last parts of the brain to myelinate and mature--finally completing anywhere between the early twenties to the late twenties. Adolescents lack perspective and judgment at least partially due to the delayed maturity of the prefrontal lobes. Other neural functions can be mature, and the adolescent capable of phenomenal performance in many areas--and still lack basic adult-level maturity. This is common knowledge to any observer of adolescents and young adults.

We are all unique. We begin as unique individuals genetically, and grow more unique with every passing and diverging experience. Even identical twins display uniqueness in both genetics (copy number variants [CNV] and environmentally triggered epigenetic controls) and environment (intra- and extra-uterine).

The more we know about the unfolding of a child's being with time, the better able we will be to provide a more optimal environment for child development, and the acquisition of real world talents and competence.

But as the imaging technologies have become more sophisticated, the scientists have found many other neuroanatomical effects of the practice of music. Musicians have enlarged Broca's areas--the famous language area named after the 19th century psychiatrist.
Music practice correlates with an enlarged left planum temporale which is in Wernicke's area and lights up during both speech and music processing. What's going on with these language centers? One very clever study revealed the "bottomline". The scientists hooked up some musicians to the fMRI machines and had them listen to and follow the score of a Bach chorale. Unbeknownst to the musicians the investigators introduced an error into both teh performance and the score, to see what what would happen with this kind of 'exception processing' What happened was that the unexpected event lit up half a dozen areas of the brain which had prior thereto been considered part of the language-specific cortical circuitry.

So that's the bottom line of a decade of PET, MRI, fMRI and other imaging studies on the effect of the practice of music on the brain. The practice of music develops the language circuitry of the brain.
Source

ADD / ADHD Delayed Brain Maturation--Controlled for Medication?

Brain development in puberty is sensitive to many environmental factors. Children with learning disabilities may have delays in cortical development of from 3-5 years or more, for various reasons. More recent brain imaging studies focusing on ADD / ADHD provide further evidence that some learning disabilities involve brain maturation delays beyond the normal pubertal delays in frontal and pre-frontal cortex maturation.

The scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) compared the brain scans of 446 children ranging from pre-schoolers to young adults.

Of the group 223 had been diagnosed with ADHD.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of the brain were carried out twice at around three-year intervals.

The researchers found that the delay in ADHD was most prominent in regions at the front of the brain's outer mantle (cortex), which is important for the ability to control thinking, attention and planning.

Other than this both groups showed a similar back-to-front wave of brain maturation with different areas peaking in thickness at different times.

The imaging study revealed that in youngsters with ADHD, the brain matures in a normal pattern but is delayed on average three years in some regions.

Dr. Philip Shaw who led the research says that finding a normal pattern of cortex maturation, even though it is delayed, in children with ADHD should reassure parents and may also explain why many youngsters eventually appear to grow out of the disorder.

Dr. Shaw and colleagues at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Child Psychiatry Branch, were able to detect the thickening and thinning of thousands of cortex sites by using a new image analysis technique which picks up the focal and regional changes where the delay is most marked.

Source

The developing brain is sensitive to environmental insults from alcohol, marijuana, other drugs and chemicals, infection, trauma etc. It is too early to tell if sufferers from ADD / ADHD and other childhood learning disabilities suffered such environmental insults early in their lives, or whether genetic factors are involved.

It is also unclear what effect drug treatment for ADD / ADHD may have on the studied pattern of pubertal cortical maturation. It seems likely that other non-pharmaceutical approaches for encouraging cortical development would be even more effective than pharmacological interventions, or would at least have less potential to harm the developing brain. Time will tell.

As child psychiatrists become emboldened by such studies to devise and encourage alternative treatments for ADD / ADHD, perhaps a future imaging study that controls for medication use will reveal what effect high dosage stimulant use has on the cortical development young children. A child psychiatrist of my acquaintance commented that it will take a lot of effort to break the addiction to stimulants that has taken hold of the schoolteachers, parents, and mental health professionals of North America. He suggested, rather cynically, that billions of dollars are at stake for big Pharma.

Plastic Brains--Shaping Your Future Self

The human brain retains some capacity to learn and change throughout its life. Cortical neurons can not only change their wiring based upon inputs, but new neurons can be grown to reinforce (and replace?) existing networks. Neuroscientists are hot on the trail of brain plasticity, and the story is far from being told entire.

Focal hand dystonia (FHD) is a fascinating disorder of brain plasticity that particularly affects musicians. FHD involves plastic changes in the somatosensory cortex that receives inputs from the involved hand. The brain actually loses its ability to distinguish sensory input from the different fingers, leading to the inability of the musician to synchronize and sequence the intricate fingerings of difficult pieces for piano, violin, and other instruments. The reason for this brain confusion is that long practise sessions playing rapid, difficult pieces confuse the brain into thinking that input from different fingers is actually coming from the same finger. Input from one finger grows into the somatosensory map of a different finger as the brain adapts to this new input, until the brain can no longer distinguish one finger from another when attempting to play music. Here is more on focal dystonia.

We have only so much cortex to work with. The intricate folding of the neocortex provides us with more gray matter than we would have with smooth-surfaced brains, but there is a limit. If we lose an eye or a limb, the cortex serving that part of the body is freed up for other uses. Inputs from other sensory organs or other units of the same sense will typically grow into the unused area of cortex in those cases. Thus someone who goes blind may develop keener hearing and much better discrimination with his Braille reading hand.

Similar plastic remapping of motor cortex can occur, for example after a stroke (CVA). You should not be surprised that many scientists and mental health professionals believe that the associative cortex is capable of similar plastic remapping. In other words, it appears that you truly are shaped by the things you most commonly think about. Your brain accomodates your choices of thought and action by changing as you think, act, cogitate, and daydream.

Jeffrey Schwartz has gone beyond thinking about brain plasticity, to incorporating it into a therapy for his Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) patients. His results are promising.

While most educated persons may consider themselves too modern to fall for the admonitions of religious teachers and self-help gurus, who constantly drone that "you are what you think," perhaps it is time to go back to the underlying idea--without all the religious and other extraneous matter.

Humans are at a major turning point. They can either choose the path of accelerating change, or the path of stagnation--with its inherent vulnerability to more primitive, more vital ways of thinking and living. Al Fin frequently points out the stagnant and self-defeating ways of education and child-raising in the modern west. Here at Al Fin, the best alternative put forward to mainstream stagnation, is the next level. But the next level will require smarter humans--humans who can direct their own evolution.

The curve of forward development and accelerating change will not be a smooth, continuously upward curve. It will develop in fits and starts, with occasional relapses and reversals. We are missing much of the data we will need for many of our forward leaps, but more than that, we are missing the conceptual power we will need. If we--through our commitment to stagnant ideologies and customs--neglect basic advances we could be making, we will pay for our lapses dearly, in time.

Adult brains are not nearly as plastic as childhood and teenage brains. The one advantage that adult brains possess, is their life experience and possibly their fuller use of the prefrontal pathways of the brain. These advantages may be used exclusively for one's own benefit, or in addition, used to assist younger generations.

We will eventually utilise gene therapy to bring about higher intelligence in humans. This will be done first in neurodegenerative conditions of old age and childhood. As the methods improve, the benefits of better intelligence-conferring genes (and other augments) will be made available to everyone who can pay--even if the person must travel to Brasil or India to obtain the treatments. But I suspect that we are capable of significant improvement in our ability to learn and conceptualize simply by using the natural plasticity of our own brains. Certainly methods for teaching our children can result in much more capable and confident children if they work with the natural plasticity and the natural hunger for competence of the young brain.

The positive lessons of brain plasticity in Schwartz's treatments for OCD and the negative lessons of brain plasticity in FHD, should give a thoughtful person much to think about.

Previous posts at Al Fin discussed the importance of "purpose" in providing motivation for development and positive change. Learning the lessons of neuroplasticity provides a deeper rationale for discovering purpose in life, and using that purpose to motivate, and to set personal goals.

Religious and ideological zealots and terrorists have no lack of purpose or motivation. They simply want to destroy all competing ideologies and religions. Those of us with more constructive goals may need to focus a bit more.

Psychological Neoteny and Leaving Adolescence

Adolescence in modern societies is largely an artifact of current childraising and educational techniques. Adolescents are protected from most real world responsibilities, sequestered in schools with others of their age group until their early twenties, and receive minimal supervision and guidance in the acquisition of practical real world skills from "adults" who may or may not have gained a level of wisdom and judgment from their own encounters with the adult world of responsibility.

Current baby-boomers are the first generation to have been raised under the new, pampered, age-isolated and work-restricted regime of child-raising. Baby-boomers have raised their own children under a similar-but-more-so regime of age isolation and sheltering from responsibility. A third generation is currently being raised into this regime.

Besides poor child-raising and a counter-productive educational system, in their quest to become responsible adults, modern youth must also battle against a "youth culture" that encourages binge drinking, psychoactive drug use, and other acts of "rebellion" which may have long-term consequences for their ability to function optimally in a world of personal responsibility.

In earlier America, youth were not treated as adolescents. This online book, The Underground History of American Education, provides an extensive look at earlier educational practises in America. Joseph Kett's Rites of Passage likewise provides an illuminating look at what the education and life of American youths was like prior to the wars of the 20th century. Adolescence as we know it was largely unknown in those times. It is an artifact of modern practises.

Dr. Robert Epstein has looked at this issue extensively, and has written the book The Case Against Adolescence. Epstein has come to the conclusion that adolescents are able to learn most if not all adult competencies and responsibilities--if society would give them a chance. But that is not likely, given current attitudes, educational methods and laws, and childraising techniques--combined with a destructive and corporate controlled "youth culture."

A final complication and confusion for many, is the fact that parts of the human brain do not fully develop, myelinate, and neurologically prune until the mid-twenties. What does this mean? It means that the brains of youth are still "plastic" up until their twenties--still developing. They will lack some forebrain function as youth, which may serve them in good stead at a later age, if they are given the proper training and guidance in the meantime--and do not damage their own neural development through unwise excesses of psychoactive drugs and alcohol.

Then what is "psychological neoteny?" It is merely the end result, in adulthood, of not having learned the lessons of judgment and responsibility in youth that are necessary to live a responsible life of personal competence. A psychological neotenate is a victim of combined dysfunctionalities of society, parents, educational systems, and age-segregation with sheltering from responsiblity.

I refer to psychological neotenates as "lifelong incompetents." The reason for the "lifelong" descriptor is that these "adults" are beyond the age of maximal plasticity of the brain. They have largely lost their chance to grow into responsiblity and competence. Is that an absolute barrier to growth? No. The human brain retains some ability to modify itself, retains stem cells and glial function, well into maturity and beyond. But the youthful brain, with its ongoing myelination and active pruning, remains significantly more plastic until the mid-twenties.

Never has western culture needed competence from its youth more than at this time. The west is being challenged on several fronts--ideologically, demographically, spiritually (recall that I am an atheist, so the concept of "spirituality" will be a broad one), and on current and near-future battlefields.

In North American cultures, and in the UK, there is a general failure of competence-formation among a large proportion of youth. That is the report from large employers, it is the complaint of industries wanting to establish plants inside the US, it is the tale of credit statistics and bankruptcy courts, it is the story of youth and young adults staying with their parents into their twenties and thirties. One must look for the threads of this particular tapestry, because of the rapidity of its flux.

Children are not a Blank Slate. Yet many of the potential abilities and competencies of children and youth, are latent. They must be developed within the proper time windows. If child-rearing and educational practises are not geared toward encouraging development of these latent competencies within the proper time windows, the child will suffer in later life from a lack of these competencies. Of all the educational systems of the world, only the Montessori and similar approaches, acknowledge this critical developmental sequence.

Later youth and early adulthood, with the late development of the forebrain, absolutely requires exposure to multiple philosophies, spiritual approaches, political ideologies, and professional/vocational styles. A failure to expose youth and young adults to a diversity of ideas is the equivalent of an academic lobotomy--an indoctrination or brainwashing rather than an education. We see this academic lobotomy practise commonly at modern universities, in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.

Fortunately, there are alternative paths through life, apart from the dysfunctional educational systems and universities of many western societies. Paths where children are allowed to develop competencies and responsibilities commensurate with their growing abilities.

I will develop this idea more later.

Bonus: Epstein's essay "Let's Abolish High School."