May 6th

EQ: How does the infant brain structure work?

Throughout my research, I’ve encountered some texts and papers that have failed to answer my essential question, yet allowed me to expand my knowledge on the wonders of the infant brain. One text that I found incredibly helpful was a paper on “Brain Development and the Role of Experience in the Early Years,” written by Adrienne Tierney and Charles Nelson. This lengthy document does quite a good job of exploring speech and facial processing by discussing findings and connecting it to what we know about neuroscience. Though I am certainly not at the level of expertise to critique the accuracy of the paper, it definitely did help connect the knowledge I have so far on neuroscience to real-life experiments, which is something I’ve been wanting to observe. The document begins with a summary of the prenatal period, which reassured me that what I’ve been studying has really been “clicking.” What surprised me the most about the article was the section on environmental effects on brain structure and function. The paper discusses a study that observed children raised in different institutional settings in Romania. The findings recognized the “deprivation and enrichment” effects that stimulate the brain through experience, which I’ve been learning more about through my research on synaptic pruning. The article intrigued me in possibly looking into more experiments. 

The second article I read was a lot shorter and explored a new imaging technique that the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Italy developed. The technology was developed to capture microglia in the act of “nibbling” parts of synapses, which offers scientists insight into how microglia helps shape the brain’s circuits. Though my project hasn’t really entailed looking into how technology plays a role in observing the brain, perhaps it is something that I can explore to further understand (or try to, at least) what neuroscientists are doing today and how technology has evolved over time.