How the environment affects the brain | Integrated Learning Therapy

It is a simple fact that the brain is directly affected by the food we eat, the air we breathe and how we treat our bodies. The way the brain is affected can be seen in our behaviour – and children who struggle with learning tasks or behaving appropriately are showing that their brains are not functionally optimally.

Too many such children are labelled with supposed disorders which are then treated with prescribed medications. Too often the labels are inaccurate and the medications unnecessary. Many practitioners working with these children believe that a less harsh approach, one that will not do damage to a child’s nervous system, is wiser. It is also sometimes more helpful than the overused starting place of having a serious, mind-altering drug given to a child as though it held no more risks than a Smartie.

For example, many children with learning problems suffer from allergies. Not all allergies present as a rash. A child will often experience headaches, leg pains, digestive disorders, muscle spasms or bedwetting. Dark circles under the eyes are also a telltale sign – and not always the result of a late night. Wheat, milk, eggs, sugar, peanuts, oranges and chocolate are common allergen foods. Very often, the child will crave the foods to which he or she has an allergy.

You can try a simple method to recognise allergens by taking a child’s pulse before and ten minutes after eating a suspected food. An elevation of 10 or more counts per minute in pulse reflects a probable allergen.

Parasites or bacteria are sometimes the culprits that may increase allergies. Candida Albicans (a yeast overgrowth in the gut) is often indicated when the child shows general ill-health and listlessness accompanied by disinterest in and aversion to sitting down and getting on with schoolwork.

Such children may be more sensitive to pollutants, food additives and preservatives, food colouring and dyes. These environmental offenders put the respiratory system in distress and the lack of proper oxygen to the brain can manifest as hyperactivity and unmanageable behaviours.

It may take some time to investigate the underlying causes of learning challenges but it is critical to do so. Once the source is discovered and addressed, the body has a marvellous ability to create balance and heal. The brain is plastic enough to be able to restore function and the reward is seeing a child achieve a calmness, purpose and a growing sense of confidence in himself.

Image supplied by Freepik.

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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.