4.10: Brain Systems Underlying Development

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Todd LaMarr

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Supporting Brain Development

During the first two years of life, the brain undergoes dramatic growth while supporting the development of various behavioral and cognitive abilities. As a caregiver, you cannot directly observe this brain growth, but you are able to witness the many developmental milestones infants and toddlers rapidly progress through. Neuroscience has shown that many developmental achievements are supported by specific underlying brain systems.

The type of secure attachment young children develop is related to the relationships they have with caregivers. In six month old infants, caregiver sensitivity and brain functional connectivity were related between the hippocampus and brain regions important to emotion regulation, cognitive flexibility and social communication (Rifkin-Graboi et al., 2015). Between 6-8 months of age, infant brains are able to distinguish between the sounds of any language, but by around one year of age, they neurally commit and become more efficient at processing their native language and less proficient at distinguishing between sounds not found in their native language (Kuhl et al., 2006; Rivera‐Gaxiola, Silva‐Pereyra & Kuhl, 2005). At twelve months of age, the achievement of walking is correlated with functional brain connectivity of motor networks in the infant brain (Marrus et al., 2018). Joint attention, the coordinated focus of two people on an object, emerges over the first 2 years of life and supports social-communicative functioning related to the healthy development of language, empathy, and theory of mind. The functional organization of the brain is related to the emergence of joint attention in infants and toddlers (Eggebrecht et al., 2017). The accelerated vocabulary development after 18 months that many children experience is related to a rapid myelination phase in language-related temporal and frontal brain regions (Pujol et al., 2006). As these studies demonstrate, not only is the brain experiencing overall growth in volume and functionality, specific brain systems are supporting childrens’ evolving abilities, many of which we, as caregivers, observe in their behaviors. ^{^[1]}

^{^[1]} Eggebrecht et al., (2017). Joint attention and brain functional connectivity in infants and toddlers. Cerebral Cortex, 27(3), 1709-1720. CC by NC 4.0