Guide to optimal learning
SCIENTISTS TRACK GROWTH OF HUMAN BRAIN
BY ALAN EYERLY / UCLAToday UCLA brain-imaging researchers have developed a
powerful new technique for creating maps of growth patterns in the brains of children. The findings, published in the March 9 issue of the journal Nature, open a new window on brain development, revealing extraordinarily complex
patterns of tissue growth and loss. The scientists employed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology to scan a group of 3- to 15-year-old children at two-week and four-year intervals.
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Led by Paul Thompson at the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, the research team used high-performance computers to analyze brain images.
"The study is exciting for us as it provides the first detailed maps of growth patterns in the brains of children," Thompson said. "By seeing these profiles of tissue growth and loss, you can identify which brain regions are growing fastest at a certain age range, or even in an individual child.
"This provides a new window on brain development, and we are beginning to compare growth profiles in children with autism, childhood-onset schizophrenia, dyslexia and other learning disorders," the researcher said.
The team found that brain systems specialized for learning language grew extremely rapidly from age 6 until puberty in both boys and girls, but then stopped growing around ages 11 to 15, coinciding with the end of a well-known period during which children easily learn new languages.
"The main surprise is an extraordinary wave of growth, like a forest fire, proceeding from the front of the brain to the back, between the ages of 3 and 15 years," Thompson said. "Another surprise is that some brain systems lose tissue very rapidly," he added.
From ages 7 to 11, children lose tissue in deep brain nuclei that control motor skills, such as learning to ride a bicycle, thus suggesting a refinement in processing efficiency and a pruning away of redundant tissue.
"Because of this fast elimination of tissue, this may be a key age for learning motor skills," the researcher suggested.
Scientists also detected a massive growth spurt from ages 3 to 6 in frontal regions of the brain that specialize in organizing and planning new behaviors. During this period, children learn an immense variety of new behaviors.
As children approach puberty and adolescence, a wave of peak growth moves backwards in the brain toward language systems.
Thompson said the findings have key implications for educating children. Aided by a better understanding of how the brain develops, educators could teach languages, mathematics and other specific skills at the most advantageous times.
In another first, the brain-mapping technique reveals underlying changes in the brain's anatomical hardware as children acquire new skills. Now that they have detected previously unseen waves of growth and key anatomical changes, scientists can establish powerful linkages between cognitive and behavioral changes and rapid changes in underlying brain structures.
The findings have exciting diagnostic implications as well. By assembling the first detailed maps of the growing brain, researchers can detect aberrant growth profiles that allow earlier diagnosis and treatment of learning and developmental disorders such as autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
The UCLA researchers also have applied this new imaging approach to adult patients with Alzheimer's disease.
That's when they made the intriguing discovery that the last brain systems to mature in adolescence degenerate first in dementia.
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