Learning Affects Synapses but Synapses Affect Learning??

This chapter was another chapter that had me astonished more than anything. The relationship between brain activity and neural synapses is very intriguing and for me perhaps even a little confusing. I appreciate any feedback I can receive to help me understand more completely.

I recall having discussions about synapses in class this semester already. I also remember being rather concerned with the fact that you are born with many, and lose them over time. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not in the best athletic shape, but I am fine with that. What I am not fine with is not being in top mental shape. I never want to lose my ability to learn and acquire new knowledge. I found the discussion on overproducing and releasing synapses very intriguing. I was born about as cross-eyed as a baby can get. I now realize just how lucky I am. I had two operations in order to correct my eyes, and that was at 2 and 3 years of age. I'm fortunate that my brain was able to recover perfect vision. However, later in life, a scar muscle started pulling my one eye out and I could see but my brain must have involuntary compensated for that muscle and began to rely on one eye. The only reason I knew I had a problem was because friends would tell me that one eye was looking in another direction than my other eye. I had a third operation on my eye to correct this eye and I remember the doctor saying take it easy for a day or so after I take my eye patch off as I had to allow time for my brain to make an "updated connection". My brain did in fact make an updated connection, as I noticed my full peripheral vision range had returned. The whole idea is incredible for me to think about after reading this article.

What really got me thinking was the rat experiment. According to the research, the rats that had a choice as well as those that did not had higher blood vessel density. But when it came to synaptic production, the acrobat group was the top achiever. The mandatory and voluntary groups just exercised by running a treadmill. The acrobats had to perform on an elevated obstacle course which I suppose meant in addition to merely exercising, they had to think about what they were doing to achieve greater success along continued attempts. This created new synapses but not necessarily more activity. What does that mean? Learning creates new synapses regardless of age as opposed to the number of synapses equal capacity to learn which would be affected by age to a degree? Am I understanding this correctly? I'd like to think I am, because it means good things when thinking about the ability to learn was we age.

How Children Learn

This week I actually found the reading more fascinating than I did something to react to. I found it very interesting how experts haven't up until just recently began concluding that the infant's mind is so powerful. Humorously it makes me think of "Stewie" the infant character from the TV animated comedy, "Family Guy" on FOX. Stewie is a brilliant infant, capable of understanding the world on a much larger scale than most of the humans in his world. The more I read the article and read about the numerous studies - beyond the Piaget and Vygotsky studies I learned about previously - that have shown that infants really are capable of phenomenal things, it made me wonder. If we were born with a clear understanding of the world and language, what incredible things would we be able to accomplish.

Up until I began reading the article, I had no idea that infants had so much capacity. Particularly the non-nutritive sucking study, I was flabbergasted. I would have loved to be observing an infant recognize that the movie they are watching is out of focus simply by sucking. That is simply phenomenal to me. With regards to my Stewie comparison, a study like that makes it that much more believable that what an infant is actually thinking is as complex as what Stewie is able to verbalize. If I can put this in simpler terms, a child prodigy is said to have abilities far above the average of the same age. In terms of this article and the studies detailed within, is it possible to conclude that many children identified as prodigies may have grown up in an environment that is far above average and were exposed to stimuli and the opportunity to develop very complex schemata on a much larger scale than average children?

My final point, based on the fantastic research detailed in this chapter, children certainly have a much great capacity to learn than experts have ever realized before. A friend of mine at church bought the entire "Baby Einstein" video series and has mentioned to me on many occasions some of the amazing things his child has done. His daughter began speaking full words before her second birthday. To continue reading, I would like to see some research data about the "Baby Einstein" series as well as other tools of the like and be able to see how effective these tools are for cognitive development.