mind over matter

OK, this won’t come as a shock to anyone’s who’s heard a little kid shout something to the effect of, “Mommy, why is that man so fat?” New research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis finds that the contemplative brain network, an introspective mental system involved in tasks like self-recognition and understanding others’ motives, is less complex in children than in adults. The network is simplistic in kids’ brains but “establishes firmer connections between various brain regions” over time.

Before you roll your eyes, consider the implications: if researchers can establish exactly how these connections and other brain networks develop and interact, then they’ll have a new and improved framework to understand phenomena such as brain injuries and conditions such as autism.

“[Researchers used] a new technique called resting-state functional connectivity MRI to identify brain networks and analyze their functions and development. Instead of analyzing mental activity when a volunteer works on a cognitive task, resting-state connectivity scans their brains after they have been asked to rest and not engage in any specific tasks. The scans reveal changes in the oxygen levels in blood flowing to different areas of the brain. Researchers interpret correlations in the rise and fall of blood oxygen to different brain areas as a sign that those areas likely work together. In neuroscientist’s terms, this means the regions have functional connectivity.

…
“The difference between children and adults is profound,” [graduate student Damien] Fair says. “In a graph depicting the strength of connections between the brain regions we studied, children’s minds have just a few connections between some regions, while the adult brains have a web-like mesh of many different interconnecting links involving all the regions.”

Interesting. I know an infant’s brain develops way more nerve connections than it needs and then prunes away the excess (hypertrophy, it’s called), but apparently the different regions aren’t quite working in tandem for some time.