How does movement build a child's brain? | Integrated Learning Therapy

(Extracted from the website https://extension.psu.edu/movement-builds-a-childs-brain, by Jacqueline Amor-Zitzelberger.

Integrated Learning Therapy (ILT) focuses on the role of movement in helping brain development and learning. Just how does movement build brain structure?

At birth, a baby’s brain contains 100 billion brain cells, roughly as many nerve cells as there are stars in the Milky Way, and almost all the brain will ever have. In the brain, nerve cells called neurons are present at birth and eventually form trillions of connections over the first years of life depending on the child’s life experiences. These neural connections start to send messages to each other to meet the requirements of the body and brain. Compare this to posting messages to friends on Facebook or Instagram. If you send a message to 500 friends, and each of those friends, in turn, send or forward that message to another 500 friends, and so on, the messages or signals expand exponentially.

This messaging is important for the brain-body connection. The ability of the brain to develop and maintain neural connections is based on reflexive movements (before and following birth) and then new movement and play experiences of toddlers and young children. Brain cell connections are lost or pruned away as a result of limited activity or stimulation. “Move it or lose it” is true for both children and adults.

Researchers say that there are “windows of opportunity,” or sensitive periods, in children’s lives when specific types of learning take place. For instance, scientists have determined that the neurons for vision begin sending messages back and forth rapidly at two to four months of age, peaking in intensity at eight months. Babies begin to take much more notice of the world during this period. If a child misses this opportunity, that does not mean that the child will be impaired, but her brain may not develop circuitry to its full potential, or optimal development, in that area. The nervous system does not even mature until somewhere between the ages of 15 to 25, so during this time, parents and teachers can continue to provide a variety of active play opportunities through those years to promote further brain growth.

Brain development does not stop after early childhood, but the window narrows, making it harder for adults to learn skills they missed during childhood. Ultimately, our adult capabilities are determined by childhood activities.

Children need to move to activate the brain. And the brain responds in full force allowing them to move in a variety of ways including crossing the mid-lines. Songs like “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” and “Hokey Pokey” are examples of crossing the midlines of the body. Why are these action songs and the mid-line important for brain development? The motions to the songs encourage children to cross all three body mid-lines, reaching the top to bottom, left to right, and front to back. These physical movements demand coordination from both the left and right sides of the brain. This strengthens the tissues called the corpus callosum that divides the two sides of the brain that is important for communication from one side of the brain to the other. These movements help to develop and strengthen neural pathways laying the foundation for further development in language, literacy, and math skills.

Crossing mid-lines can help stimulate brain activity in adults too. Try this activity. Extend one arm straight in front of you. It doesn’t matter which one. Point your index finger, and draw a large, imaginary figure 8 lying on its side, crossing left to right in front of your body. Run your finger along this imaginary figure several times. Now switch to the opposite arm. It may be harder since it is probably your non-dominate arm. Trace the same large figure 8 several times. This activity stimulates both sides of your brain and refreshes your thinking process. It might help you get through those long afternoon workdays.

There is one easy way that you can boost your child’s brainpower through movement activities. Turn on your children’s (or your) favourite music and have a dance party. You’ll have so much fun that no one will realize that you’re building your child’s brain!

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Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy. Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation.

Image supplied by Freepik.