Blog 1

-Describing the picture of the synapse connections.The bigger picture that is being represented here is a display synapitc connections between neurons at birth, six years old, and fourteen years old. At birth there is not that much activity being conducted within the brain, as far as new neurons being made. However, during early childhood, as shown at the age of six, there are many new neuron peaks occuring. At this age a persons is learning many new things and the formation of neurons is increasing to be able to do all the newly learned functions. A six years old brain has shown to using more energy than an adult brain. This is because a six year old is learning more sensory data that is completely new to the brain. Because this data is new it takes more effort to do a task, where at an older age the task will be more familiar and easier to complete. Each change occurs because the brain is developing and at an early age obtains a lot of information needing more neurons to help form taks and obtain information, where at an older and younger age is less needed.
-The bigger picture of the reading was about how the brian develops and steps it takes on the road to development. There are many key aspects that occur within the brain that give aid during development. There are five different lobes of the brain and they each have different tasks. The brain is made up of neurons that send messages to parts of the body to perform different tasks. Brain development is crucial when dealing with neurons and how the brain functions. There are several things that can interfere with brain development including genetics, evnironmental stiumuation, plasticity, nutrition, and teratogens.
-This does make sense to me because understanding how the brain develops and functions is very important for a teacher to know when dealing with developing children. At an early age you are learning many tasks, where after you learn them and use them over and over again they are much easeier to complete. Also, a teacher may find that some students are developing at different speeds. There are reasons for this and it its important for a teacher to understand why this maybe happening and how to deal with each student over come their obstacles. I never thought that there would be such a decrease of neuron connections at an older age because throughout your education the material gets harder. But, I guess it does make sense that you are building on information that you have previously learned, therefore, at the begining is the most difficult to learn the material. I can connect this to my first grade class, because I was put in extra help for reading. Learning to read was one of the thoughest things that I learned, but now reading is very easy for me and I have no trouble doing that. This is a great example of how at a younger age I was using more neurons to learn a task, and now it takes less effort to complete. I took psychology senior year and biology last year, so most of the stuff that I read in this chapter was stuff that I previously have covered. Senior year we watched a video about a girl and how she had a part of her brain missing, and was able to have it regrow because of plasticity. I am kind of confused about this process, and would like to learn a little more about it.