Mental Fitness for Good Health

What You See and Hear Is Wired By Experience

Research in brain neuroplasticity is destroying the simplicity of my understanding of our brains, senses and perceptions of reality.

Before I began reading about brain neuroplasticity, my understanding of the brain and senses was unsophisticated, logical and supported by traditional knowledge.

I am wrongly believed that my eyes communicated to my brain what was in my eye’s view.  Likewise, I was again wrong in believing that what was my ears heard was heard by everybody the same way as long as their ears were functioning well.  I thought what I heard was accurately sent through my ears to the brain.

New research has shown that what we see, hear or sense is determined by past sensory experience.  In other words, what we see is determined by past visual experience and what we hear is determined by past auditory experience.

Jeffrey M. Schwartz, M.D. and Sharon Begley reported some very exciting research in their book, The Mind and the Brain, Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force.

This research is very important for parents.

Patricia Kuhl, is a leading authority in speech development.  Patricia studied Canadian babies raised in English-speaking homes.   

"Six-month-old babies could distinguish Hindi speech sounds even though the sounds were not part of their auditory world; by twelve months they could not.

Between six and 12 months, Kuhl concludes, the babies’ brains began the "use it or lose it" process of pruning unused synapses.  The auditory cortex loses its sensitivity to phonemes that it has not heard everyday.  This may be why children who do not learn a second language before puberty rarely learn to speak like natives.

The reverse is true, too: connections that are used become stronger, even permanent elements of the neural circuitry.

Everything a newborn sees, hears, feels, tastes, and smells has the potential to shape the nascent circuits of their brain.  The brain is literally wired by experience, with sights, sounds, feelings, and thoughts leaving a sort of neural trace on circuits of the cortex so that future sights, sounds, feelings, thoughts and other inputs and mental activity are experienced differently than they would have otherwise be."

This research validates the importance of parents talking, reading and stimulating their children at an early age in order to enrich their children’s brain activity.  The research suggests that the absence or poor quality of sensory stimulation for children, may have very damaging effects on their children’s senses and brains.  Likewise, enriched sensory experience for children will create senses and brains with greater sensory acuity and efficiency. 

To a certain degree children live with the brains stimulated by life experiences provided by their parents.  Children’s brains and sensors are not just genetically determined.

Dr. Hal

Life and Mental Fitness Coach

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