What Science Is Telling Us

How Neurobiology and Developmental Psychology are Changing the Way Policymakers and Communities Think About the Developing Child

By Dorian Friedman

Abstract: By bringing together neurologists, developmental psychologists, pediatricians, and economists, the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child offers a unique knowledge base from which early childhood policy and practice can be informed. By communicating how and why early experiences have a lasting impact on brain architecture—and what kinds of experiences are positive or negative for healthy brain development—the Council can help policymakers, parents, and practitioners improve prospects for our nation’s children. Understanding the special developmental challenges for poor children, such as less stimulating early environments and greater exposure to health risks such as iron deficiency, can help us all focus our attention—and public dollars—on areas that can have the most impact on society. Current science can be applied most effectively to four key areas of policy and practice: preparing young children for school; providing the best forms of child care; considering the well-being of children under welfare reform; and protecting children who have been abused or neglected.

An explosion in scientific research over the past few decades has shed new light on the most remarkable stages of human development—and the critical importance of the earliest months and years of life. From a basic understanding of the evolution of the brain itself to the elaborate interplay between environmental and genetic influences on personality, we are coming to learn more than we ever imagined about the developmental challenges children face and what kinds of experiences and environments can help them master childhood.

But whether this exciting new science will result in better policymaking for our children requires more than its publication in the usual scientific journals or media coverage of provocative study findings. Translating the latest research into concrete action requires experts who can bridge the mutually isolated realms of academia, government, and the public arena. The National Scientific Council on the Developing Child is stepping up to take on that challenge.

In order to master the task of explaining the science of development, the Council is applying the work of cognitive and social scientists who study how people process information. This, among other things, sharply differentiates this new group’s approach from expert commissions of the past. “This is a unique aspect of the Council—the seriousness with which we take our role as science communicators,” says Jack P. Shonkoff, pediatrician and director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, who serves as the group’s chair. “We intend to systematically study how selected audiences interpret what scientists tell them about early childhood development, and then identify new ways of communicating more effectively with these audiences so that scientific knowledge can better inform public policy debates.”

The Child’s Brain: A Vast Field of New Developmental Research

One of the reasons the Council can accept this challenge is its inclusion of many of the nation’s preeminent researchers on both child development and brain development. As such, the Council stands at the crossroads of developmental psychology and neuroscience. From inside its members’ laboratories and classrooms come some of the most important observations on how children develop and what can be done to increase the odds that their development will be successful. This window on cutting edge knowledge allows experts from disparate disciplines to evaluate the newest research findings and to decide when and where science has sufficient evidence to inform policy or practice.

Of the many fascinating observations that have been made, this one may have the most important and urgent implications: Early experiences have a direct and critical effect on a baby’s brain. In fact, a child’s earliest experiences are responsible for literally wiring the brain for future use, thereby building its basic architecture. Most of the traits and abilities that form our unique personality—the things that make each of us who we are, what we think, and how we feel—are reflections of these early developments in our brains. As a child learns to crawl, speak, and interact with others, for example, specific areas of the brain are stimulated, develop, and grow.

Thanks to advances in neuroscience, researchers now have empirical evidence to prove these statements. Using sophisticated techniques like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or electroencephalograms (EEG), for example, scientists have a window into the human brain. They can watch how babies’ brains change with development and see how vulnerable or resilient they are to harmful influences. Specifically, they can observe what happens in the brain as a child is presented with different stimuli—the sound of a barking dog, the image of a familiar face—and identify which parts of the brain are active, and how active they are when the child does different things.

In many important ways, neurobiology is confirming what we have long suspected. We know, for example, that the human brain changes dramatically during the first few years of life. At birth, a baby’s brain is only about a quarter the size of an average adult’s. But it soon begins an impressive growth spurt, reaching 80 percent of adult size by around age three.

More astonishing, however, is what’s happening within the brain to cause that rapid growth. Just days after conception, the spinal cord is taking shape, and the brain’s nerve cells, or neurons, are being formed. When babies are born, they already have many billions of neurons—nearly all the brain cells they will ever need. Yet, recent studies suggest that new neurons continue to be generated throughout life—but at a far slower pace, and possibly only to replace those that have died off.

Virtually everything experienced by a child—from the first glimpse of his or her parents’ faces, to the soothing sounds of music, to the first delicious taste of ice cream—builds connections in the brain. These connections—or synapses—allow the neurons to communicate with each other across long distances. During its period of greatest growth—from before birth to around age three—the cerebral cortex is adding an astounding 40,000 synaptic connections every second, explains neuroscientist Pat Levitt, a Council member from Vanderbilt University’s John F. Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development. That’s consistent with what other research now tells us: infants dramatically overproduce synapses so that a typical toddler may have 1,000 trillion such connections.

For information about commonly used terms in Council publications, see Definitions.