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Neuroscience Update 2009
  1. The New York Times website has an interactive graphic that illustrates how the brain develops from infancy through age 21 (See nytimes.com/wellchild)

  2. “Brain scan opens a door into the nature of autism”,The Record, Lindsey Tanner, 12/1/08, describes a Chicago study examining brain wave patterns in school age autistic children. It is believed that the “signatures of autism” have been discovered involving a delay in processing sounds. The study measured magnetic fields generated by electrical currents in brain nerve cells, recording brain activity in real time. Response to each sound was delayed by 1/15th of a second, human speech averaging four syllables per second. Whether or not this delay is found in all autistic children is unknown. Timothy Roberts, the study’s lead author is from Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia.

  3. Increased appreciation and respect of the body’s sensory system was featured in “The Unappreciated, Holding Our Lives in Balance, Natalie Angier,The New York Times, 10/28/08. The importance of the vestibular system, a paired set of tiny sensory organs deep in the temporal bone on either side of the head, is featured in the revised version of Sensation and Perception (Sinauer, 2005). It is basically a cavity in the skull, filled with fluid and lined with membranes. Its primary mission is to keep track of where the head is, and is involved with all aspects of walking upright. It is also a pipeline between sensory systems. When you shake your head or move your body, the vestibular system cues the eyeballs to move in compensation, and gives information on the effects of gravity and linear head motions.

  4. The sense of touch is the object of increasing research. The human finger is so sensitive it detects a bump one micron high, the diameter of a bacterial cell. Touch (haptics) requires interaction, unlike vision or hearing. If we want to learn tactilely, we must move to the object. Touch receptors are scattered throughout the skin and muscle tissue. Some respond to pressure and vibrations, others to warmth, cold, and pain. ( “Primal, Acute and Easily Duped: Our Sense of Touch”, Natalie Angier,The New York Times, 12/9/08).

  5. Training 2-3 year old children to inhibit impulses is the focus of current research by Dr. Adele Diamond, of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. (Training Young Brains to Behave”, Benedict Carey,The New York Times, 9/15/08). The study involves executive functioning, a skill not fully developed until the 20s. Resisting distractions, delaying gratification, holding multiple ideas in the mind and cognitive flexibility comprise executive function in the prefrontal cortex. Activities for these young children were specially designed in a program known as Tools to promote self-regulation involving paired children. For example, one told a story from pictures while the other one listened. After two years of study, measured against a control group, children in the Tools program scored 20% higher on all measures of executive functioning.