PSYC 2120 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Frontal Lobe, Synaptogenesis, Visual Cortex
Document Summary
6 months: spurt in motor cortex (begin to crawl) 7-9 months: rapid growth of frontal cortex (used in integrating information: prefrontal area plays a particularly important role in the development of voluntary behavior (ex. As child"s brain gains weight, child"s behavior becomes more like adult behavior. Brain weight: because number of connections between brain cells (synapses) are increasing synaptogenesis. Rate of synaptogenesis (at birth) = 1 million connections/second. Neural plasticity: ability to make and remove: connections between cells, entire cells. Myelin sheet coats neurons to send messages efficiently: affects experience-dependent development, affects sequence of motor development. Myelination occurs after birth and into adolescence. Occurs in 2 directions: cephalocaudal (head down, proximodistal (center out to extremities) Experience-expectant: development of neural connections that depend on ordinary experiences to grow normally. Experience-dependent: growth and refinement of neural connections as a result of specific learning experiences. Over time, unused cellular connections and cells die. Under-pruning may be a problem in autism.
