What's the difference between these two brains?
"The picture is of the brains of two three-year-old children. It’s obvious that the brain on the left is much bigger than the one on the right.But why is one so much bigger? Because one was loved by its parents and the other neglected – a fact that has dramatic implications."
"The brain on the right
lacks some of the most fundamental areas present in the image on the left.
Those deficits make it impossible for that child to develop capacities that the
child on the left will have: the child on the right will grow into an adult who
is less intelligent, less able to empathise with others, more likely to become
addicted to drugs and involved in violent crime than the child on the left. The
child on the right is much more likely to be unemployed and to be dependent on
welfare, and to develop mental and other serious health problems.The
primary cause of the extraordinary difference between the brains of these two
three-year-old children is the way they were treated by
their mothers. "
"The child with the
much more fully developed brain was cherished by its mother, who was constantly
and fully responsive to her baby. The child with the shrivelled brain was
neglected and abused. That difference in treatment explains why one child’s
brain develops fully, and the other’s does not."
"Professor Allan
Schore, of UCLA, who has surveyed the scientific literature and has made
significant contributions to it, stresses that the growth of brain cells is a
“consequence of an infant’s interaction with the main caregiver [usually the
mother]”. The growth of the baby’s brain “literally requires positive
interaction between mother and infant. The development of cerebral circuits
depends on it.”Prof Schore points out that if a baby is not treated properly in
the first two years of life, the genes for various aspects of brain function,
including intelligence, cannot operate, and may not even come into existence."
"Suffice
it to say that there is now a very substantial body of evidence that shows that
the way a baby is treated in the first two years determines whether or not the
resulting adult has a fully functioning brain."
"Eighty per cent of
brain cells that a person will ever have are manufactured during the first two
years after birth. If the process of building brain cells and connections
between them goes wrong, the deficits are permanent."
"Many
different approaches have been tried, from intensive supervision to taking
young offenders on safaris, but none has worked reliably or effectively. Recent
research indicates that a large majority – perhaps more than three quarters –
of persistent young offenders have brains that have not developed properly. They
have, that is, suffered from neglect in the first two years of life, which
prevented their brains from growing."
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