In April 2015, Rebecca Saxe, a neuroscientist at the “Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences” at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), gave us a touching image that would go around the world in just a few minutes.
The indiscreet window
The image in question is an MRI that captures Dr. Saxe with her baby, who is only a few months old. It pushes the boundaries of science and unravels the universality of “two figures, with their invisible clothes, hair and face, who could be any mother with her child, at any time or place in history.” Best of all, it is an indiscreet window that exposes the “anatomy of the bond” in all its splendor, beyond all individuality.
Its genius lies not only in its ability to highlight the obvious differences between the brain of an adult and that of a child in full development of its capabilities, but also reveals the link between the two: the love of a mother for her child.
The mother, through her caresses and kisses, feeding and the tactile, olfactory and visual stimulation she provides her baby during the first months of life, exerts a powerful stimulus that prepares his immature brain so that it can later develop all the potential for which it is genetically determined.
Brain development requires a complex system and network of “neural highways” whose “construction” begins to materialize during pregnancy, but continues throughout the first months and years of life.
Through the care and stimulation that the baby receives from its environment, the correct maturation and assembly of the different brain structures is favored, which will later make learning, attention, motivation, planning and impulse control possible. And this is so because each neuron establishes several hundreds or thousands of connections with other neurons, and does so in direct proportion to the degree of stimulation it receives. These connections, also called “synapses”, are key to proper brain function because they are the ones that allow movement, breathing, self-control and behavioral, intellectual and social control of the individual.
But the question does not end here, because in order for information to travel more quickly and effectively through this network of “neuronal highways”, a substance called myelin is needed, which is a layer that protects and insulates these connections and transforms them into true “highways”. Today we know that although myelination is a very active process that begins at 14 weeks of gestation, it is maintained and prolonged for years with an increase directly proportional to the degree of environmental stimulation received.
What does the myelination process consist of?
This process begins with the nerves located in the upper part of the spinal cord, facilitating the movements of the upper limbs and the grasping of the hand. Subsequently, it reaches the lower brain, making autonomous walking possible and providing the child with the capacity to go out and look for the different stimuli that will feed and satiate his mind by his own means. And later it continues inside the brain itself always in a posterior-anterior direction (from back to front), until it reaches the last region to mature, which is the frontal lobe (around 18 or 19 years of age).
Thanks to this complex system of assembly and refinement of our neuronal road system, evolution has endowed human beings with endless possibilities that allow them to explore the environment around them while enriching it.
The brain undergoes a complete transformation throughout the first years of life and into adulthood. It is a complex, dynamic and changing organ, which is fed and nourished by the surrounding environment. In this symphony of changes in which genetics and the environment are the orchestra conductors, the first years of life are of fundamental importance because it is when the foundations that will sustain the entire cognitive-behavioral process later on are created and reinforced. Because ultimately, everything that stimulates our brain also feeds it.