Enhancing Your Baby's Brain Development

Understanding how the brain functions and develops is important.

Brain cells develop and function as soon as they receive data from the surrounding through the five sensory organs—ears, eyes, mouth, nose, and skin; that is, hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling, and touching. The development and sharpness of these organs depend a great deal on the amount as well as the intensity of stimuli that they receive.

There are billions of brain cells, and they are like blank sheets of paper to be filled up with data obtained from the five sensory organs. They gradually become the brain, the physical organ of the body, which is responsible for thinking, often referred to as the mind.

The mind serves to control and coordinate mental and physical actions, including thoughts and feelings, as well as beliefs and attitudes. Over time, thinking will continue to develop and shape the mind, turning it into two major components—the conscious mind, and the subconscious mind. The former selectively controls the data input; the latter involuntarily and indiscriminately takes in all the data received. The truth of the matter is that the subconscious mind dominates the conscious mind. In other words, one’s conscious mind may want to do one thing, but one’s subconscious mind may instruct one to do another thing, and one may end up doing the other thing, which may be quite different from what one originally intended. Therefore, it is important to provide the right and appropriate data to the baby, because the mind of the baby is not mature enough to separate the truths from the half-truths or untruths. In other words, a baby’s perceptions are permanently stored in his subconscious mind.

Remember, in the beginning, the baby’s brain is not fully developed. Speed up its development through enhancing its five senses.

Seeing

Even before birth, babies can see: they can tell what is light and what is dark. After birth, their vision improves significantly when they see shapes by following their lines. At first, they can see only within 8 to 12 inches, and they see only black, white, and gray. When they are several weeks old, they may begin to perceive their first primary color—red. Progressively, they learn how to use their eyes to see what they want to see by following moving objects. Then, they begin to learn their “binocular vision,” which is coordinating and seeing with both eyes. Babies should develop their normal vision, which includes eye-hand coordination, within the first several weeks and months.

Hearing

Hearing is the 1^st step towards language learning. Therefore, it is important to identify and address any hearing problem by having a hearing screening test right after birth.

Babies have different responses to sounds, depending on their own temperament; more sensitive babies are more reactive to sounds; calmer babies are less reactive.

Around two months, babies begin to respond to familiar voices by making vowel sounds like ohh. At about four months, babies start to look for the source of a sound, and by six months they try to imitate sounds. By eight months, they babble and respond to changes in the tone of voice. By twelve months, babies may be able to say single words like "ma-ma" and "da-da."

The baby’s brain continues to respond to complex sounds and attach different meanings to different sounds heard. Your baby will continue to use hearing to make sense of the world and to learn to communicate with sounds.

Sensing

The baby’s skin is most sensitive to touch. Tactile sensations are responsible for the connection between the skin and the sympathetic nervous system; these nerves regulate heart, blood circulation, lungs, and other internal organs.

Therefore, it is important to touch the baby while breast feeding or changing diapers by touching and massaging his toes and fingers.

Smelling and tasting

Most newborns will eat every two to three hours around the clock.

By the end of the first month, babies may develop an eating and sleeping pattern, but don't impose it on your baby. At this age, your baby should be fed whenever it shows signs of hunger.

Most babies have developed a sense of taste. In fact, newborns seem to have more taste buds than adults do. Sensitivity to sweet and bitter tastes is present at birth, but babies’ reactions to salty foods don't come until about five months.

Babies use their sense of smell right from the start and can localize odors. Studies have shown that five-day-old newborns will turn towards a pad soaked with breast milk, indicating that they can smell it, and a few days later they demonstrate a preference for the smell of their mom's milk. 

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau