Background on Brain Development of Infants

From birth, a baby’s brain cells proliferate wildly, making connections that may shape a lifetime of experience. Neuroscientists say that repeated experience wires a child’s brain. Each time a baby tries to touch a tantalizing object or gazes intently at a face, tiny bursts of electricity shoot through the brain.

As a baby has different experiences the sensory receptors transmit this information, which stimulates nerve activity in the relevant part of the brain. When a baby is visually stimulated, for example, a nerve is triggered in the area of the brain that controls vision.

Babies are born auditory dominant. This means that they hear better than they see, touch, feel, or smell. By two months after birth, vision replaces hearing as the dominant sense, and the visual system, begins to develop very quickly. Normal eyesight will develop only if the eye, the nerves between the eye and the brain, and the brain itself are properly stimulated. In this regard, the first two years of life are believed to be the critical period for developing good vision.

The development of the brain, senses and skills is activity dependent. Every experience of an infant excites certain neural circuits in the brain and leaves others inactive. Those circuits which are excited often will become stronger and those which are excited rarely may be eliminated. Use it or loose it, to some extent! Enriched environments bolster brain, senses and skills development in infants.

In view of this, much research has focused on discovering the optimum stimuli for infants during playtime, for example using toys, books, and DVDs, aimed at developing an infant’s visual, listening, motor and cognitive skills. Visual skills of looking and recognizing pictures are the basis to literacy development that eventually leads to reading and writing development. The unique Yes! SuperBaby™ collection has been developed with this in mind.