A Brain for All Times

• Unlike animals, the human brain is only about 40% formed at birth. Infant brains have more neurons than adult brains and circuits not used wither away. After birth, environmental stimuli turn various genes on and off to customize our brain. This can be thought of as activity-dependent development where the outside world represents the brain’s food. Dialog, therefore, is extremely important during the first five years of life. Play is experimenting in a moderately safe environment, which creates creative capacity. The teenage brain is still being synaptically shaped. This period may rival early childhood as a critical period of development. Modern schooling tends to deprive students of a sense of meaning and the emotional security enjoyed by children in more primitive cultures who participate in adult activity from an early age. Today, adolescents have less-intergenerational connection that ever.

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