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Baby and Adult Brains Sync Up When Playing Together


<Baby and Adult Brains Sync Up When Playing Together>

A recent study conducted by The Baby Lab at Princeton Neuroscience Institute show that the brains of babies and adults sync up when they are playing and learning together. (https://bit.ly/2QUmQuL)

The neural activity paths light in the same areas of the brain for both infants and their paired adult as they share toys and eye contact.

The baby and the paired adult are literally on the same wavelength. This is what we would describe as bonding and connecting.

Three surprising findings from the study are:

1. The common part of the brain that light up consistently in both is the prefrontal cortex, responsible for executive and high level understanding and learning of the world, a function that was previously taught to be non-existent in infants.

2. The infant's brain often leads the adult's brain by a few seconds, suggesting that the child may not be a passive learner but an active participant in the engaged activity.

3. When the eye contact and connection are dropped between the infant and paired adult, the synchronization drops.

This study reinforces my belief in early learning and parental involvement are key to optimising a child's potential. The human connection and investment of attention by the adult care-giver wires up the infant's brain in ways that technology cannot.

It has been a while since we pause our parent-child playgroups and parents are still writing in for the program. But we are resuming the program from March.

Parents of children 3 and under: If you are interested in our play-based, brain-stimulating and multilingual parent-child playgroup, please send us a message!

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