Neuroscience Update 2010

Born with an Urge to Help
Recent testing of very young children revealed a natural willingness to help, babies showing innate sociability and the desire to assist others. Examples are of opening a door for someone or picking up a dropped item. Helping behavior appears innate because it appears so early and before parents begin teaching the rules of polite behavior. The desire to help appears across cultures and is not influenced by training. As they near age 3, children become more selective in their helpfulness, sharing more with a child they know. They begin to get the idea of rules and strongly object when peers do not follow those rules. This research was done by Dr. Michael Tomasello, who also wrote a book, Why We Cooperate, published in October 2009. (We May Be Born With an Urge to Help, Nicholas Wade, The New York Times, 12/1/09).

The Nose Aides Emotion
The mysterious powers of smell were examined at the International Symposium on Olfaction and Taste, held in San Francisco in July 2009. Smell is our quickest sense with dedicated brain pathways straight from the nose and into the olfactory cortex for instant processing. This processing occurs within the place where emotions are born and emotional memories stored, the limbic system and amygdala. That is why memories from our childhood are triggered by the smell of certain spices, and why other smells can give us nausea. Smells come up through the back of the mouth to about 20 million smell receptors located about 3 inches above our nostrils. (The Nose, an Emotional Time Machine, Natalie Angier, The New York Times, 8/5/09)

We Hear with Our Skin
In a recent article in Nature, a new study confirmed that people can hear with their skin. Scientists have also known for years that we hear with our eyes, integrating both auditory and visual cues like mouth and face movements when we hear speech. The question posed was: Has evolution hard-wired people to integrate sensory cues? The answer appears to be “Yes”. (People Hear With Skin As Well As Their Ears, The New York Times, 12/1/09)

Young Children Are Wired for Math
Cognitive neuroscience has recently found that children as young as 4 can do and understand math calculation and application. In contrast, the brain’s ability to link letter combinations with sounds may not be fully developed until age 11. “Nobody has any idea about how teaching affects the brain”, says Kurt Fischer, director of the Mind, Brain and Education program at Harvard. Though there are many false claims, a Buffalo preschool class has a track record of achievement when it comes to math instruction. Through creative games they learn 1-1 correspondence and concepts of a set. By preschool the brain is struggling to link 3 crucial concepts: physical quantities (1) with abstract digit symbols (2), and with the corresponding word (3). (Here are 7 marbles. This is the look of the number. This is how it sounds when I say it.) Children recognize geometric shapes by 18 months and by preschool can begin to grasp basic geometric definitions. The program being used, Building Blocks, links numbers to objects, to rhythms, and to the physical world. Human beings, even in remote areas, have a general grasp of quantities, a sliver of the parietal cortex active in that function. (Studying Young Minds and How to Teach Them, Benedict Carey, The New York Times, 12/21/09)