Children serve to inject new ideas into the system of cultural evolutionđź§
Since the evolution of the human brain lead to our brains being immature at birth, we have the longest childhood of any species and much of the growth of the human brain occurs after birth. Also, babies and children are more reliant on the right hemisphere than the left. This extended period of learning and exploration is what’s distinctive about us. Childhood is, as Dr. Alison Gopnik put it, the research and development stage of the species, concerned exclusively with learning and exploring. We adults are production and marketing.
- Novelty is handled by the right hemisphere, and is transferred to the left hemisphere as it becomes familiar
- The global attention of the right hemisphere precedes the narrow attention of the left hemisphere
- dominance for exploratory attentional movements
- the left hemisphere assists in focussed grasping of what has already been prioritized
Each generation of children confronts a new unique environment, and their brains are particularly good at learning and thriving in that environment. Also, children and babies act independently without caring what others will think. Childhood is the species’ way of injecting noise into the system of cultural evolution.
The child’s brain is extremely plastic, good for learning, not accomplishing—better for exploring rather than exploiting. It also has many more neural connections than the adult brain. But the brain selects for the brain circuits that are most utilized throughout development. Then the default mode network and left hemisphere come online, and the left hemisphere prioritizes things that it already knows and expects.
References
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Pollan, Micheal. (2018). How to Change Your Mind Chapter 5. The Neuroscience of Your Brain on Psychedelics (Location 4446). New York, NY: Penguin Random House.
Metadata
Type:🔴 Tags: Biology / Neuroscience / Developmental Neurology / Sociology Status:⛅️