In their forties, the brains of children who have received an intellectually stimulating education are larger. This gives them a better quality of life.
- The quality of learning before the age of 5 is decisive for a successful life around forty
- It has effects on social behavior but also on the size of the brain
Talking, playing, interacting with young children to awaken them is the surest way to bring them to a successful life when they are adults. This is demonstrated a study by researchers at Virginia Tech and the University of Pennsylvania published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience which concludes that a good learning environment during the first five years of life has an impact four decades later on the size and functioning of the brain.
“Our research shows a relationship between brain structure and five years of high-quality educational and social experiences,” says Craig Ramey, lead author of the study. This consisted in analyzing, using cerebral imaging, the statistically significant changes that appear in the structure of the brain in middle age depending on the environment in which the first five years of life took place.
High quality educational support
A group of children from the age of six weeks received health care, nutrition and family support services, some of which were supplemented by five years of high quality educational support five days a week and fifty weeks per year. Follow-up examinations of 47 study participants showed that the 29 who were in the group that received educational enrichment focused on promoting language, cognition, and interactive learning had increased breast size. entire brain, including the cortex and areas associated with language.
These findings were made by studying scans of the whole brain, as well as more focused examinations of the cortex and five other brain regions, by the time children were in their late 30s or early 40s. selected for their expected link with cognitive stimulation.
Biological effects accompany behavioral benefits
The scientists point out that the results for the group benefiting from educational enrichment were more spectacular for men than for women, without the reasons for this situation being able to be explained.
“These results reveal that biological effects accompany the behavioral, social and economic benefits of early childhood experiences and support the value of positive learning and socio-educational support for all children, particularly to improve outcomes of children who are vulnerable in the early years of life,” the researchers point out.
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