No two human brains are the same – but, the developmental process that leads to the adult brain is also remarkably similar between individuals and between species. It’s an impressive feat considering the number and variation in the potential connections of the brain. How do neurons decide who they are and then migrate to settle in their final destinations? Once their final domain has been established, how do the roads of axons build themselves and snake through distant causeways in the body and brain to create highways for later perfectly synchronized information flow? And once a complex highly organized highway of axons is established, what leads to the predictable and systematic deconstruction or preservation of some roadways over others? While experience plays a big role it is surprising how much has been selected by evolution and is dependent upon molecular machinery built from our genome. In his ambitious project to bring some light to these issues William Harris gives an amazing overview of the process in his book Zero to Birth: How the Human Brain Is Built.
If the questions above interest you, and you want to get a well-organized and accessible understanding of how your brain became its current marvel, this is an amazing introduction. This is not an easy field to conceptualize with much of it is outside what is visible – hidden in the womb, and in molecular biology. This is where Harris shines: the often-difficult conceptual images are introduced through his masterful use of language to paint pictures in your mind that are manageable and memorable from orange rinds to, tanks treads, and zombie cells. You will be surprised at how accessible genetics and molecular biology can be.
The book is also a wonderful witness to the research process and history of developmental neuroscience. We see the human side of the researcher, including how the social aspects of research resulted in times with the dismissal of ideas due to gender, research early death, and even suicide; but the survival of the brilliance of the research in this text is a testament to the eventual success of the scientific process. Through this book you will be taken into the conceptual puzzles that stumped researchers and how they sought answers through careful experimentation but also careful observation of serendipitous methodological mistakes. You will see over and over how students built the field by questioning their teachers and those that came before them. All of this is done through exemplary storytelling as Harris builds questions from results.
This is a scientific book not a guide to teaching practice or a life better lived, but it will leave you with a life better appreciated. The examination of development will give your discussions of the role of evolution, genetics, and experience in brain development nuance which will have implications for how to frame social dilemmas, mental health, and teaching practice. Harris will help you appreciate where you came from both evolutionarily and developmentally. The microscopic world that builds a human will leave you with a sense of wonder and humility.
To understand the human, Harris loads the text with examples from a vast array of organisms that were necessary to understand ourselves. What our brain shares with even the smallest multicellular and some single-cell organisms is really some curiosity candy that your mind will savor. From the paramecium to fruit flies and owls, we share anatomical and molecular processes that display an astounding variety and preservation of form and function.
While the majority of the book takes us from a single cell to the first moments, we open our eyes after birth, the last chapter brings it all together to appreciate how the molecular and cellular adventures of the previous pages build the foundation of our lives. I really found this book to be quite the page-turner with complex concepts boiled down to the crucial information in bite-size morsels. It is not only a book that answers questions, it helps you conceptualize the inquiry – it builds the awesome world of neurodevelopment by expanding your curiosity. This book left me with a sense of awe as it will do the same for you.
The more teachers learn about neuroscience and psychology, the more we admire Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang.
Unlike most researchers, she has spent time as a classroom teacher.
And, her extensive research—in both neuroscience and psychology—offers us wise perspectives on our craft.
For instance, she has zealously emphasized the inextricable connection between emotion and cognition—although we live in a society that wants to keep the two apart. As she has shown in her books and articles, we can’t think deeply about thinking without understanding the importance of feelings.
Thinking and feeling aren’t two different things. They’re names for distinct perspectives on the same thing.
(You can check out her essay in Mind, Brain, & Education: Neuroscience Implications for the Classroom, edited by David Sousa.)
More recently, working with Linda Darling-Hammond and Christina Krone, Dr. Immordino-Yang has published a lucid and practical summary of our field. In 20 jargon-free pages, she makes a strong case for focusing on development as an essential variable in schools and in learning.
You can download The Brain Basis for Integrated Social, Emotional, and Academic Development here.
That’s a mouthful of a title. But it synthesizes an impressive range of complex and vital topics: age-appropriate teaching strategies, neural development across the lifespan, epigenetics, even cultural well-being.
As an introduction to The Brain Basis, I interviewed Dr. Immordino-Yang. This transcript is edited for clarity and brevity.
Andrew:
You’ve packed a lot of information into this document. What’s your goal in putting it all together this way?
Mary Helen:
I wanted to tell a story about what it means to be a human being.
From there I thought we could think back to retrofit what are we doing in schools to support the development of our full humanity.
And so I aimed to tell a story of many fields—of biological, genetic, developmental, and cognitive research that would help people understand why human development and learning are so closely tied together.
Schools really can no longer ignore the new evidence about human development in thinking about our aims and our strategies in educational environments.
Andrew:
A big chunk of this brief talks about different developmental stages, and the appropriate educational strategies to use during each one.
Where you get the most pushback? What are people most surprised about?
Mary Helen:
One of the things that people have been very surprised about, and where I get a lot of pushback, is in adolescence. I talk about adolescence being a fundamental time of plasticity—but also of vulnerability.
And this means that teenagers really need deeply supported opportunities to explore alternate identities: scholarly ways of thinking and being, social ways of thinking and being.
This is a time when kids can develop very deep interests, and connect those interests to their world—how it is now, how it has been in the past, and how it could be different in the future– like they never have been able to do before to the same extent.
Schooling needs to capitalize on that. Yet we really do not in the way that standard schools are designed. In fact we directly undermine that kind of agency, that kind of exploration of self and ideas that’s just fundamental to adolescence.
Andrew:
In schools, I’m guessing that would mean more electives, fewer requirements. You’d like more open-ended, freeform opportunities for high school students?
Mary Helen:
Well, yes. But all that in the context of very strategic support and close relationships, in addition to intellectual and social opportunities to really get invested in important work: more like an apprenticeship model of schooling in adolescence, as compared to a didactic transfer model.
There are schools doing this extremely well. They tend to be schools built for kids one step away from failing out of society, though.
For example: The New York Performance Consortium Schools got special dispensations to not have standardized testing. Instead they do performance-based portfolio work as a graduation requirement.
These students were mostly at risk of failing [in their prior schools]. And then lo and behold, when you redesign their educational experience so it’s more of this apprenticeship model—students focus on broad, relevant problems—they begin to think in scholarly ways. They develop deep understanding and explore innovative solutions.
These kids go on to college at far higher rates. They’re graduating college. They’re just ever so much more engaged than their peers.
We’ve got this misunderstanding that when kids are doing poorly and flailing around, you want to double down on discipline. You want to straighten them out and get them on the straight and narrow. Control them first, and then you can teach them.
In fact what you need to do is offer them opportunities to really utilize the energy that they have, and to question and rethink their ideals, to build their deep desire for inventing themselves. And give them a creative, scholarly, structured outlet in which to productively explore that.
Andrew:
And, as you say, that makes a lot of developmental sense.
Let’s change gears. This document talks about three essential brain networks: the Executive Control Network, the Default Mode, and the Salience Network.
This is essentially a neuroscientific way of thinking about learning.
Another approach is the psychological approach: let’s think about motivation, let’s think about attention, let’s think about working memory.
When you talk with teachers about this neuroscientific approach, does it deepen their understanding of the psychological framework? Does it conflict with it? Does it confuse it?
Mary Helen:
I think it really does [deepen their understanding]. I hope it does. My aim was to teach educators about the dominant models of brain development right now.
There are hundreds and hundreds of studies demonstrating how these networks work. And those networks had really not been explained to educators to this point.
What you notice about them is: none of them is emotional or cognitive. These networks are both [emotional and cognitive] all the time. No one of them is the social network. They all have a role to play in sociality.
Andrew:
In the past you’ve written that there’s relatively little neuroscience that teachers need to know. So this approach is quite a change for you.
Mary Helen:
Well, not really. What I really think people do need to know is about human development. And one of the sources of evidence is neural development.
Understanding the basic functionality of the [neural] system is important for supporting the development of the person.
And don’t get me wrong: in some of the best schools in the world the teachers don’t know diddly squat about brain development.
But they really, really understand what their aim is for their students. They know in a deep way about the kinds of thinking and relating and reflection that they want their students to be capable of.
And in that case you don’t need the neuroscience anymore.
I think we need it in the United States because we have such a faulty model of how learners learn, and what to do when they’re not doing as well as we would like.
I’ve written several papers about the default mode network for example. We in education are potentially undermining the development of deep thinking, deep understanding, deep integration of content because of our overly task-oriented focus.
We shift people into an outwardly directed task-oriented state too much at the expense of reflection and synthesis that happens internally in a narrative constructive process.
Andrew:
So much of our vision of good teaching is a kind of a performance. It’s external, it’s what the students are doing.
Mary Helen:
That’s right. It’s about what you do, it’s not about how you think. And good thinking takes time. It takes skills for reflecting. Those skills are often neglected in our schools.
We have this kind of “frantic productivity model” which is basically a lie about what meaningful accomplishments students are actually accomplishing.
Andrew:
The “frantic productivity model” sounds a lot like schools where I’ve worked.
American education has been battling between constructivism—“inquiry-based” and “project-based learning”—on the one hand, and direct instruction on the other.
Your brief is calling for a truce. You say that these approaches can work well together, and we’re looking for a wise balance.
My question is: as a teacher how do I know when I’ve gotten that balance right? What does that feel like? What does it look like?
Mary Helen:
Yeah, great question.
So here’s the thing: this is where the teaching skill comes in.
And what skill do you need to have? What teaching artistry do you need to have? You need to deeply understand your students, and deeply understand your aim for them.
What’s your intent in the lesson?
Too much of what we do in education is designed around an outcome—a “learning outcome.”
Instead, it should be designed around this question: what are the kinds of mental capacities and habits of minds that students will be practicing?
To balance constructivism with direct instruction, think about the how much more than the endpoint. And then the answer will look really different in different contexts: different kids, different content, different supports and scaffolds, at different times.
At this point, our conversation turned to a description of a specific school focusing exactly on these complex questions and difficult choices.
That discussion was so interesting that it deserves its own blog post. I’ll have that live for you within the month.
Chapter 2 of Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain kicks off with a teenager’s diary entry from April of 1969:
I went to arts centre (by myself!) in yellow cords and blouse. Ian was there but he didn’t speak to me. Got rhyme put in my handbag from someone who’s apparently got a crush on me. It’s Nicholas I think. UGH.
Man landed on moon.
This anecdote marvelously captures common perceptions of adolescence.
Self absorbed. Dotty about crushes and boys/girls and clothes. Too addled by hormones to focus on epochal events — like, say, Neil Armstrong’s small step onto the moon.
In Defense of the Adolescent Brain
Researcher Sarah-Jayne Blakemore would like to change your mind about all of these perceptions.
Drawing on decades of research, she focuses on one essential claim. Teenagers’ brains aren’t incomplete versions of adult brains. They’re not hyper-hormonal versions of children’s brains.
Instead, adolescence results from distinct, meaningful neural developments. Teenagers do the developmental work that their life stage calls upon them to do. Their brains help them along with exactly this task.
The Stories that Science Tells
More than most researchers, Blakemore manages to describe scientific studies precisely and readably.
You get a very clear picture of what researchers did, and why they designed their experiments as they did. And: what they learned from doing so.
And yet, you’re never bored or baffled. Blakemore’s descriptions just make sense.
(I try to do exactly this almost every day on this blog, so I can tell you: that’s REALLY hard to do well.)
As a result, you’ll come away with a clearer understanding of the cognitive developments that take place during the teenage years.
Also, some of the surprising deficits. (Teenagers are worse than 10-year-olds at recognizing emotional facial expressions!)
By the way: teens also don’t recognize the difference between high- and low- stakes as well as we would expect.
Because of Blakemore’s clarity, you’ll also know how we know each of these truth.
Conclusions
Blakemore doesn’t end with a step-by-step program for teaching or parenting teens.
Instead, she offers a way of thinking about this vital stage of development.
She helps us step back from day-to-day adolescent conflicts to see the bigger neuro-biological picture.
For example: it’s not just teenagers who drink more alcohol with their peers. Adolescent MICE drink more alcohol when surrounded by other adolescent mice. No, really. (See page 4.)
She also resists the popular temptation to rage against technology use. Based on her lab’s analysis (undertaken by one-time LatB blogger Kate Mills), we don’t really know enough about technology use to draw firm conclusions about its perils.
In particular, we don’t have good at all about the influence of adults’ technology use on the children around them.
In brief, we should read Blakemore’s book not for quick solutions but for long-term perspectives.
This glum question has a glum answer: yes, pollution harms working memory.
Researchers in Barcelona focused on children walking to school. Working with over 1200 students, 7-10 years old, they reached a grim conclusion. Children whose walk was more polluted experienced slower development of working memory.
(The same research project had already concluded that pollution in school slows working memory development as well.)
Why teachers care
If you’ve been to a Learning & the Brain conference, you know that working memory is essential for all classroom learning. It allows students to combine pieces of information into new, meaningful ideas.
The less working memory students have, the slower they are to read, acquire math skills, compare historical figures, and learn new oboe melodies.
In other words, damaging working memory is one of the worst things we can do in schools.
What teachers should do
Of course, pollution is too big a problem for teachers and schools to solve right away. We’ll need lots of social effort–and lots of political will–to make meaningful changes.
In the short term, the study’s authors warn against one seeming solution. We might reason that walking to school exposes children to pollution, so we should encourage them to ride in cars or buses. However, the health benefits of walking are obvious and important; we should encourage–not discourage–physical activity.
In the short term, the best we can do is encourage students to walk less polluted routes: away from major highways, closer to parks and forests.
Of course, such a solution isn’t available to all students. We’ll need bigger fixes over the long term.
For the time being, knowledge of the danger is the power that we have.
Several years ago I taught Jacob: an affable high school sophomore notable for his quick wit, his impressive height…and his immaturity. He was, technically speaking, goofy. Jacob’s peers noticed, and didn’t appreciate his antics. (Neither did I.)
When I met his parents for a teacher conference, I commented on his surprisingly juvenile behavior. They exchanged glances, and his mother said: “Well, he is the youngest student in the sophomore class. He could be a freshman.”
This news made all the difference to me. I had been fooled by Jacob’s 6′ 2″ frame. His behavior, odd for a 10th grader, was entirely appropriate for a 9th grader. When I started giving the structure he needed, he calmed down. And grew up.
By the end of the year, he worked with his classmates very effectively.
The Travails of Relatively Young Students…
A recent BrainBlogger post describes the Jacobs of the educational world. If a school has a strict cut-off date for a particular grade, then some students will be almost a full year younger than others.
In college, this difference shouldn’t matter much. After all, 19-year-olds and 20-year-olds should be emotionally and cognitively well matched.
In younger grades, however, that age difference can be huge. The age-appropriate developmental differences between the youngest and the oldest kindergartener might be substantial.
BrainBlogger’s author–identified only by her first name Naomi–outlines the alarming and ongoing consequences of this early developmental gap.
Relatively young students are likelier to be criticized for their immaturity–as happened with my student Jacob.
They are likelier to be diagnosed with ADHD.
Relatively older students are likelier to be accepted into Gifted programs, even if they’re not gifted.
Relatively young students are less likely to take the high-stakes exams that shape educational possibilities in some countries.
They are less likely to attend college, and also less likely to graduate from college.
…and, some benefits
At the same time, Naomi is careful to note the complexity of the question.
In the first place, as she writes, “the impact of [relative age effects] on educational attainment is…probabilistic not deterministic.” That is, some younger students will do just fine, even if their group is less likely to do so.
In fact, some research shows the advantages of being at the younger end of a grade’s age spectrum. For instance, younger students get the message that they need to work harder to succeed as much as their older peers, and so might have a better work ethic.
Next Steps
If you’d like to think more about this complex question, I’d start by looking over Naomi’s article. She lays out the research well, and includes sources from many different countries.
In the meanwhile, you’ve now got a helpful new question to ask. When working with students whose behavior makes you wonder about ADHD, you might start by looking up their age.
The brain is an incredible machine with immense potential. When we are born, our brains are wired to learn from, and adapt to, our environment. Given what we know about the brain’s unique malleability in the first years of life, young people’s need for purposeful support and education seems obvious during this period.
However, upon looking at the current state of early childhood education and care, there is a clear mismatch between what is and what should be. In this article, I will touch on how remarkably powerful early education can be, and that through current practices, we are missing a huge opportunity to prepare ourselves for the future.
Brain Science of the Early Years
Within a handful of weeks of conception, even before some mothers know they are pregnant, children’s brains begin forming. By the time a child is born, she has most all of the neurons she will ever have: about 100 billion of them (Perry, 2002). Also occurring before birth is the formation of the first synapses, which are the connections between the neurons. These neural connections allow the brain to learn and function.
Because of this prenatal formation of synapses, incredibly, newborns are able to show a preference towards their mothers’ voices (Querleu, et al., 1984). These prenatal synapses also enable neonates to cry with a cadence that matches that of their mothers’ native language (Mampe, et al., 2009). Even before we are born, we are learning.
Over the first few years of life, the brain continues making connections between the neurons, to the tune of about 700 to 1,000 synapses every second (Center on the Developing Child). The rate of synapse formation peaks between 1 and 2 years of age (Kostović, et al., 1995), and by 2 or 3 years of age, the brain has about twice as many synapses as it will have as an adult (Corel, 1975). Starting at some point in childhood and lasting through adolescence, the brain gradually and systematically prunes away the surplus synapses that are not sufficiently reinforced through experience and behavior (Huttenlocher, 2002).
Here’s the key point: The purpose of the proliferation of synapses, only for them to be pruned away, is to capture and incorporate early experiences. This is, presumably, evolution’s way of allowing us to adapt to our environment. The brain then prunes away the unused synapses, allowing it to function efficiently.
In the same way, a fisherman ensures he makes a catch by casting a wide net. He then reels it in, taking with him only what he needs.
Because this pruning process starts early on, early experiences that are reinforced throughout the pruning process become deeply embedded in the brain’s architecture. This neural architecture then becomes the foundation that supports future learning.
Just as a house is built on a strong foundation, future learning depends on the foundation that is laid in the first years of life. A weak initial foundation does not doom an individual, though attempting to change behavior later on cannot be done as easily.
Investment in Young Children Is Good for Everyone
This quick review of research makes it clear that we must invest in education for young children. Many studies have highlighted that individuals with access to quality early childhood education enjoy both short-term benefits (see Outcome Evaluation of Washington State’s Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program which found positive academic gains for students in third, fourth, and fifth grade), and, more importantly, many long-term benefits as well.
There are two often-cited projects that help to make my point: the Abecedarian Project and the Highscope Perry Preschool study.
At 21 years of age, individuals who were enrolled in the Abecedarian program as preschoolers earned higher scores on intellectual and academic measures, attained more years of total education, were more likely to attend a 4-year college, and had lower rates of teenage pregnancy (Campbell, et al., 2002).
At 40 years of age, individuals who passed through the Perry Preschool program, on average, had higher earnings, were more likely to hold a job for a longer period of time, had been convicted of fewer crimes, and were more likely to have graduated from high school than adults who did not go to preschool (Schweinhart, et al., 2005).
Economic studies of investment in early childhood education have also found societal returns on various programs that range from about $7 to $10 per dollar invested (e.g. Reynolds, et al., 2011; Heckman, et al., 2010). The primary sources of societal benefits came through avenues such as increased tax revenues, averted criminal justice system and victim costs, and savings on child welfare, special education, and grade retention.
The benefits both to the individual and to society created by quality early childhood investment are undeniable. No longer does a case need to be made for if we are to invest in young children, but rather, how to invest in young children.
The State of Early Childhood Education
Excellent. We have the science. We have a good understanding of the general trajectory of brain development. We have confirmed that individuals tend to be much better off across the lifespan with quality experiences over the first few years of life. In fact, we have shown again and again that society benefits from early investment in people.
It only makes sense that in the most powerful nation to have ever existed, a country with access to immense resources, we would invest in ourselves at a time when we can make the strongest impact, in order to ensure a strong future.
Well, actually, that may not be the case. In fact, it’s not looking too good. Let’s take a brief look at what is actually happening, and you can decide for yourself.
Early Enrollment
How many of our nation’s young people attend preschool? The quick answer is about half. From 2012 to 2014, only 47% of 3- and 4-year-olds in the US (3,890,000 in total) were enrolled in any preschool (The Anne E. Casey Foundation, 2016). There is a swing of about 8% for families earning at or above 200% of the poverty line (55% of these 3- and 4-year-olds are enrolled) and those earning below 200% of the poverty line (39% enrolled). The enrollment rates of children younger than 3 are, presumably, even lower across the board.
Tragically, children of families earning less are enrolled at lower rates; Studies say that these children stand to gain the most from high-quality intervention (e.g., Karoly, et al., 1998, as cited in Reynolds, et al., 2011).
Though maybe it’s better that only half of young children are enrolled in preschool. The students would not stand to benefit if these preschools were of low-quality. Whether or not this is the case (though especially if it were), we have a phenomenal opportunity to improve the future standing of our nation by creating access to high-quality preschool for more than just half of our young people.
Teacher Pay
To think that so many of the nation’s three- and four-year-olds might not be getting the experiences needed to help them lay the groundwork for their future, for academics, career, and life, leaves me flustered. This feeling is only exacerbated when I learn about the preparation and benefits for those charged with setting these young citizens up for success. First things first: teacher pay.
In June of last year, the Department of Education released a report entitled, “High-Quality Early Learning Settings Depend on a High-Quality Workforce: Low Compensation Undermines Quality.” The name says it all, doesn’t it?
According to this report, the median salary for a preschool teacher in the U.S. is $28,570. That figure jumps up above $50,000 at the kindergarten and elementary levels. This disparity alone creates a disincentive for teachers to pursue a career teaching preschool — or to pursue teaching at all, for that matter.
Even the two states that come the closest to attaining pay parity fall short; teachers in Louisiana and Oklahoma still only earn 84% and 83% of what kindergarten teachers take home, respectively. And in 13 states, preschool teachers earned less than half of the annual wages earned by kindergarten teachers.
What is really spirit-crushing is that in six states (you know who you are), the annual wages for preschool teachers were less than the 2015 poverty threshold for a family of four. Yes, you read that correctly: some preschool teachers qualify as being in poverty.
While improving teacher pay alone won’t evaporate all of our early childhood education woes, it certainly will help to attract and keep talent.
Teacher Preparation
The level of teacher preparation for the preschool centers also leaves much to be desired. As of the June 2016 report, only 24 states have at least one preschool initiative that requires lead teachers to hold a Bachelor’s degree with a specialized concentration in early childhood. Also, across the country, only 45% of all preschool teachers working with children ages three to five have Bachelor’s degrees.
It is hard to make a case for increased pay when teachers are underprepared. Yet, teachers may not become masters of their craft unless there exists some extrinsic incentive to do so, be it increased salary, benefits, prestige, etc. Attempting to improve the field of early childhood education brings with it many problems. While teacher preparation and benefits are only two of the issues, I do not foresee the field progressing without redressing both of them.
Hope…?
Things looked promising back in 2013. President Obama released a plan to provide early education for all Americans. Sounds great, right? The plan incentivized states to expand access to high-quality public preschool for four-year-olds living at or below 200% of the poverty line, done through a cost-sharing program. The plan laid out benchmarks that states needed to meet in order to access funding, including state-level standards for early learning, qualified teachers, and data and assessment systems. The plan would have supported families of young children through other means as well.
However, funding for the “Preschool for All” initiative relied solely on passing a 94% increase on the federal tobacco tax, which may be why the program has not been enacted. However, after first appearing in the 2015 budget proposal, “Preschool for All” has also appeared in the proposed budgets for 2016 and 2017. Take this into consideration with the fact that the word “preschool” appeared in the proposed 2013 budget a grand total of zero times, for now, I find some comfort in knowing it has at least stayed on the national political agenda.
It’s also good to know that investment in early childhood ostensibly has bipartisan support. According to a 2016 report from the Education Commission for the States, for example, in the 2015-16 school year, Republican governors in 22 states and Democratic governors in 10 states (and also the policy makers for D.C.) increased funding for preschool programs.
Despite the five states (with governors of both parties) that decided to decrease preschool funding, the recognition of the importance of preschool overall seems to be steadily growing — albeit slowly. From the previous year to the current one, state funding on preschool programs across the country increased by 12%.
Things seem to be moving in the right direction, overall. In the 2013 Preschool for All proposal, the federal government acknowledges that it would “invest critical resources where we know the return on our dollar is the highest: in our youngest children.” Yet, despite knowing these monies have the chance to be the most efficacious, the initiative relies solely on a huge tax increase on tobacco products, of all things. These priorities don’t match up.
If you truly believe that “the return on our dollar is the highest” with a given investment, shouldn’t there be a greater push to make it happen? With funding contingent on nearly doubling the tax of some unrelated product, this plan does not convey the sense of urgency needed to move the needle on early childhood investment.
This isn’t the first time the federal government shot down a proposal to provide broader access to early childhood care, either. The Comprehensive Child Development Act of 1971, which would have established a national day care system for working families, was approved overwhelmingly by the Senate. It was, however, vetoed by president Nixon in 1972. (Here is a story from NPR.) In this case, the political climate seemed to be the primary driver in deciding the bill’s fate.
Even though they may not have had the science underscoring the importance of experiences during early childhood, the notion was understood. Nixon had been previously quoted as saying, “What happens to the child from a nutritional standpoint, from an educational standpoint, from an environmental standpoint in the years between one and five may affect that child for the balance of his life regardless of what may happen after that time.” And yet, he signed the veto.
Well, now we have the science confirming what we’ve thought all along. So what are we going to do about it?
Constructive Dissatisfaction
Who’s to say that increasing the federal budget for universal preschool would be the best way to go? I am not promoting any one solution to providing early childhood education and care. Though I am championing the idea that these are extremely formative years. During this time, a groundwork is laid that stays with an individual across the lifespan. Ensuring that young people have quality experiences during this time stands to benefit everyone.
We don’t have all of the answers yet, but we do know that our notion of daycare as it has historically been, simply ensuring the physical and perhaps mental well-being of young children, neglects to capitalize on what the science has revealed about this period.
As cognition comes online in the first years of life, it is at its most malleable. Learning is a gradual process; future learning depends on past learning, new experiences build on previous ones. Science has made clear that experiences during this time can have lifelong consequences. We know that educational investments are most efficacious during this period, and without these critical investments, potential is lost.
Though don’t get me wrong, I am trying to not use alarmist hyperbole in an attempt to garner support for the cause. Life will go on regardless of what happens in this arena, just as it has. Children born to families with access will continue to enjoy quality early experiences; not much would change for them either way. And individuals whose first years of life lack these quality experiences will continue to enter kindergarten and first grade already at a disadvantage, just as they have been doing all along.
Jack Shonkoff, director at the Center on the Developing Child, often uses the phrase “constructive dissatisfaction” to describe what he hopes people would feel when presented with the reality of the system currently in place to educate and care for our youngest citizens. He hopes that the discontentment created by the recognition of the discrepancy between what we know ought to be taking place and what is actually taking place would provide the impetus for action.
I hope that you, like me, are constructively dissatisfied. Change won’t be easy. Nor do we know exactly what it will take to ameliorate the preschool problem. Though we do know that it needs to happen. The science is clear: investing in young people is a no-brainer.
Campbell, F. A., Ramey, C. T., Pungello, E., Sparling, J., & Miller-Johnson, S. (2002). Early childhood education: Young adult outcomes from the Abecedarian Project. Applied Developmental Science, 6(1), 42-57.
Heckman, J. J., Moon, S. H., Pinto, R., Savelyev, P. A., & Yavitz, A. (2010). The rate of return to the HighScope Perry Preschool Program. Journal of Public Economics, 94(1), 114-128.
Huttenlocher, P. R. (2002). Neural plasticity. Harvard University Press.
Karoly, L. A., Greenwood, P. W., Everingham, S. M. S., Hoube, J., Kilburn, M. R., Rydell, C. P., et al. (1998). Investing in our children: What we know and don’t know about the costs and benefits of early childhood interventions. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.
Kostović, I., Judaš, M., Petanjek, Z., & Šimić, G. (1995). Ontogenesis of goal-directed behavior: Anatomo-functional considerations. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 19(2), 85-102.
Mampe, B., Friederici, A. D., Christophe, A., & Wermke, K. (2009). Newborns’ cry melody is shaped by their native language. Current Biology,19(23), 1994-1997.
Parker, E., Atchison, B., & Workman, E. (2016). State pre-k funding for 2015-16 fiscal year: National trends in state preschool funding. 50-state review. Education Commission of the States.
Perry, B. D. (2002). Childhood experience and the expression of genetic potential: What childhood neglect tells us about nature and nurture. Brain and Mind, 3(1), 79-100.
Querleu, D., Lefebvre, C., Titran, M., Renard, X., Morillion, M., & Crepin, G. (1984). Discrimination of the mother‘s voice by the neonate immediately after birth. European Journal of Obstetrics, Gynecology, & Reproductive Biology,13(2), 125-134.
Reynolds, A. J., Temple, J. A., White, B. A., Ou, S. R., & Robertson, D. L. (2011). Age 26 cost–benefit analysis of the child‐parent center early education program. Child Development, 82(1), 379-404.
Schweinhart, L. J., Montie, J., Xiang, Z., Barnett, W. S., Belfield, C. R., & Nores, M. (2005). Lifetime effects: the High/Scope Perry Preschool study through age 40. Ypsilanti, MI: High/Scope Press.
It’s easy to look at the past and guffaw at human negligence related to healthy living. Smoking, now commonly known to cause lung cancer among other illness, was just a few decades ago considered a harmless social norm. Through the 1930s and 1940s, scientists argued against tobacco use without much recognition. After Federal warning had finally been issued by the Surgeon General in 1957, it still took the American public nearly 20 more years to accept confirmed toxic effects. Now, tobacco use and second-hand smoke are regulated by cities worldwide.1
Tobacco isn’t the only toxic substance that has transitioned from being freely used to practically prohibited. Lead was still being used in wall, furniture, and toy paint until the late 1970s. Mercury, a recently confirmed neurotoxin, is being removed from existing products–including dental fillings and thermometers.
Cigarettes, lead, and mercury were confirmed as biologically damaging in less than the average human lifetime. What will we collectively know “for sure” in future decades that we’re not fully aware or convinced of now? Let’s turn our attention to a rapidly growing concern (quite literally): Plastic.
On a recent trip to India, I noticed that signs posted by local vendors announced a ban on plastic bags. Upon returning to the U.S., I listened to a radio story on charging ten cents per plastic bag in New York City grocery stores. This initiative follows the promising efforts of major cities like Philadelphia and Washington D.C. to increase reusable bag use, reduce plastic waste, and reduce harm to our environment and health.
Photo by Rina Deshpande
The intention of plastic reduction initiatives is multi-fold, with two main priorities:
(1) reduce plastic waste in our environment to protect our Earth, including climate and wildlife,
(2) reduce potential health risks – known and yet to be discovered – from ingestion and exposure to plastic.
In this article, we’ll first acknowledge the already enormous presence of plastic on our Earth. We’ll then focus on how plastic enters the human body, evaluating potential risks to healthy brain development in our children, and sharing how you can help.
Plastic’s Visible and Invisible Presence
Scientists have good reason to voice their concerns about plastic pollution. You might have heard about the murky island of microplastics and debris in the Pacific Ocean known as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” If you haven’t heard of it, most recently it has been estimated to span an area as large as 5.8 million square miles depending on how high of a concentration of plastic is considered “pollution.”2
In addition to the visible tragedy of marine life getting caught in plastic soda rings, the harm of plastic is also invisible. “Photodegradation” is the gradual process of the sun breaking down plastic bags, bottles, and other products into tinier and tinier plastics.2 Plastic does not biodegrade. It breaks apart into smaller pieces. The result? Increased greenhouse gas emissions released during plastic degradation trap heat in our Earth’s atmosphere. In addition, microplastics are now part of our natural environment. The same plant life and sea animals that eat and absorb these tiny and toxic microplastics often make it to our own human dinner plates and into our bodies.
There’s a lot of information floating around about the health risks of ingesting microplastics, particularly the effect of BPA. Let’s break it down.
What is BPA?
Many of us see “BPA-free” listed on plastic bottles and feel better because BPA is something we don’t want. But what is it?
BPA stands for bisphenol A, which is a chemical building block of polycarbonate plastics. Polycarbonate plastics are the durable plastics found in everyday items from digital equipment to cars to office supplies to baby bottles.3 Since the late 1990s, research has focused on the effects of “BPA migration,” or BPA leaking from plastics into food, beverages, and therefore into our bodies.
As in studies conducted on the neurotoxicity of lead, scientists measure BPA in blood and urine and periodically revise how much is considered “safe” for infants, children, and adults.4 Bisphenol A health research is of high interest because of our now continuous exposure to it: in one study, evidence of BPA was found in a jaw-dropping 95% of 394 demographically diverse urine samples.5
While multiple studies have been conducted in the last decades, lack of alignment across experimental designs makes the impact of BPA exposure hard to compare and generalize. Still, many scientists agree that BPA is a candidate for hazardous prenatal exposure.6
BPA and prenatal brain development
In a 2015 review, molecular biologist Dr. Paola Negri-Cesi underscored that even at low doses, BPA poses higher risks during prenatal development than during adulthood.
Most studies reviewed by Dr. Negri-Cesi were conducted on rodents, whose brain development process is sequential as it is in humans, but shorter. The presence of BPA in expecting mother rats was found to possibly disrupt neurogenesis, the development of new brain cells during embryonic development.6 While the developing brain is designed to be highly adaptable to the environment, disruption to the generation of new brain cells so early on may, in some cases, affect learning, memory, and behavior through life.
Not all studies show changes in rate of neurogenesis associated with presence of BPA, but they do reveal other abnormalities in brain development. In a 2007 study, in utero exposure to low doses of BPA was associated with significant “disorderly arrangement” of brain cell organization into adulthood.7
It’s also important to recognize that some studies show no significant effect of BPA on perinatal (before and after birth) cognitive development. For example, a 2014 rat study showed that a baby rat’s exposure to BPA through its pregnant mother or through injection after birth can impact hormone levels. And yet, its performance on spatial maze and memory tasks showed no significant difference as compared to rats without BPA perinatal exposure.8 For this reason, more research is needed to understand the impact of BPA on prenatal and postnatal development.
Presently, very few studies exist on the association between BPA levels and child cognition and behavior.9 Those that are available are relatively low in sample size, with varied results between boys and girls–perhaps because of BPA’s ability to bind with estrogen receptors. More long-term research is already in progress to assess BPA levels in mothers and cognitive development in their male and female children over time.
While scientific evidence for plastic’s harm on early development is still limited, the research above reveals initial findings such as disrupted brain cell generation and disorderly arrangement of neurons even through adulthood. These results suggest that the harmful impact of plastics may begin before birth, potentially interfering with cognitive functioning throughout life.
How can we reduce the visible and invisible plastic problem?
Though much more research is required before generalizations can be made about the effects of plastic on human development, every bit can help the planet and prevent heightened risk to health. Here are a few resources that are making large strides to reducing plastic pollution on Earth:
The Container Recycling Institute offers statistics and immediate action steps to avoid, reduce, reuse, and recycle plastics and other compounds used for containers. Check out their links to recycle anything from ink cartridges to Styrofoam packing material here.
Debris Free Oceans*, based in Miami, is dedicated to educating communities, conducting cleanups which involve data collection and analysis, and informing environmental policy. Sign up to participate here.
5 Gyres is an organization that has launched 16 science expeditions to gather information about five main subtropical “gyres,” or circular currents. They’ve started a student activism group and more! Read the website here.
We are just scratching the plastic surface of BPA’s impact on cognitive development in research. Until more conclusive evidence is offered through replicated study, policies will include a relatively high cap on what is considered “safe” amounts of exposure. Until then, in the words of Dr. Negri-Cesi, let us be moved to “adopt a precautionary principle, particularly to protect [developing organisms].”6
*Special thank you to Saira Fida, C.P.A., Esq. and co-founder of Debris Free Oceans for sharing these valuable resources!
References
1 “The Reports of the Surgeon General: the 1964 Report on Smoking and Health.” Retrieved on June 28, 2016 from https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/retrieve/Narrative/NN/p-nid/60. [Link]
2 “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch” Encyclopedic Entry. National Geographic. Retrieved on May 23, 2016 from http://nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/great-pacific-garbage-patch/. [Link]
3 “Polycarbonate Plastics and Bisphenol A Release.” Summary retrieved on May 30, 2016 from http://bisphenol-a.org/human/polyplastics.html. [Link]
4 Deshpande, R. (2016). Neurotoxicity: The Impact of Lead Exposure on Learning. [Blog]
5 Calafat AM, Kuklenyik Z, Reidy JA, Caudill SP, Ekong J, and Needham LL. 2005. Urinary concentrations of bisphenol A and 4-nonylphenol in a human reference population. Environ Health Perspect 113:391-395 [Paper]
6 Negri-Cesi, P. (n.d.). Bisphenol A Interaction With Brain Development and Functions.13(2), 2015, Vol.13(2). [Paper]
7 Nakamura, Itoh, Sugimoto, & Fushiki. (2007). Prenatal exposure to bisphenol A affects adult murine neocortical structure.Neuroscience Letters,420(2), 100-105. [Paper]
8 Sadowski, Park, Neese, Ferguson, Schantz, & Juraska. (2014). Effects of perinatal bisphenol A exposure during early development on radial arm maze behavior in adult male and female rats.Neurotoxicology and Teratology,42, 17-24. [Paper]
9 Braun, J., Yolton, K., Dietrich, K., Hornung, R., Ye, X., Calafat, A., & Lanphear, B. (2009). Prenatal Bisphenol A Exposure and Early Childhood Behavior. Environmental Health Perspectives,117(12), 1945-1952. [Paper]
The Findings: Researchers at Brown University1 have found that increased time spent on “digital media” reduces the likelihood of “flourishing.” For example, students who spent 2-4 hours on digital media were 23% less likely to complete homework than those who spent 0-2 hours.
Those who spent more than 6 hours (!) on digital media were 63% less likely (!!) to finish homework than their 0-2 hour peers.
Screen time impedes other kinds of growth. Extra minutes on digital media reduce the likelihood that students will complete tasks that they have started, or remain calm under pressure.
Surprise #1: This result holds true despite age, gender, or socio-economic status. Stereotypes might suggest, for instance, that girls can handle digital distraction better than boys can, but…at least in this study…not so much.
Nagging Questions:
At least so far, these researchers haven’t reported the effects of meaningful subcategories. Are all kind of digital media equally bad?
After all, other studies have shown cognitive benefits for some video games: for example, Portal2, or Starcraft3. One HUGE study (27,000 French middle schoolers) found that video games had basically no effect on academic performance4.
I also wonder: as teachers increasingly assign homework that might be done on a tablet, what effect does academic digital media time have on these findings? Do our efforts to join our students’ digital lives in fact impede their learning?
Is the problem here simply distraction from schoolwork? For example: if a student spends more than 6 hours a day (!) building snow forts, what effect does that have on the likelihood she will finish her homework?
The research hasn’t been published yet, so we’re still relying on the authors’ own summaries.
American Academy of Pediatrics. (2016, October 21). More time on digital devices means kids less likely to finish homework: Study finds dose-dependent relationship between time spent watching TV, playing video games or using a smartphone and tablet, and the chances a child will regularly finish homework. ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 12, 2016 from sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161021122236.htm
Shute, V. J., Ventura, M., & Ke, F. (2015). The power of play: The effects of Portal 2 and Lumosity on cognitive and noncognitive skills. Computers & Education, 80, 58-67. [article]
Glass, B. D., Maddox, W. T., & Love, B. C. (2013). Real-time strategy game training: emergence of a cognitive flexibility trait. PLoS One, 8(8), e70350. [article]
Lieury, A., Lorant, S., Trosseille, B., Champault, F., & Vourc’h, R. (2014). Video games vs. reading and school/cognitive performances: a study on 27000 middle school teenagers. Educational Psychology, 1-36.
No two human brains are the same – but, the developmental process that leads to the adult brain is also remarkably similar between individuals and between species. It’s an impressive feat considering the number and variation in the potential connections of the brain. How do neurons decide who they are and then migrate to settle in their final destinations? Once their final domain has been established, how do the roads of axons build themselves and snake through distant causeways in the body and brain to create highways for later perfectly synchronized information flow? And once a complex highly organized highway of axons is established, what leads to the predictable and systematic deconstruction or preservation of some roadways over others? While experience plays a big role it is surprising how much has been selected by evolution and is dependent upon molecular machinery built from our genome. In his ambitious project to bring some light to these issues William Harris gives an amazing overview of the process in his book Zero to Birth: How the Human Brain Is Built.
