Blog of Bermanism

Ok, two Sasha posts in two days. I know, I’m pathetic, but you would be too if you had this cute little bundle of love to hang out with all the time. Your babies tend to occupy a large number of your available processes and leave just enough left for your daily work.

Being a scientist, and a neuroscientist at that, the whole process of watching a newborn transform into an infant is really interesting. You see, when we’re born, we all have three times the number of neurons than we do when we’re adults. It is thought that the evolutionary reason for this is that all kinds of random (and a lot of very deliberate) connections are made between cells in the brain by the time a baby is born. It is almost as if every connection that can be made, is made. The result is a system that has a few very strong neural circuits and a ton of weak connections. You see, in order for a memory or a motion or a thought to be direct, meaningful, and effective, the connections between the neurons that make those functions possible have to be very strong and very selective. For this reason, most functional neuronal loops in adults are made up of one major connection between each neuron that is strengthened by other surrounding cells. In babies, this strengthening doesn’t exist and there are multiple connections per function. This is one of the major reasons why babies are so uncoordinated. Here is an analogy: if you are being read a news article by someone else in a quiet room, it is easy to focus on the story being told. If you are being read the same article in a really loud room, it is harder to hear and harder to focus on. Now imagine that you’re being read the news article in a very noisy and echo-y room and you’re being read to by 15 different people, all reading the same story, and all reading different parts of the story simultaneously, some louder than others. You can imagine that it would be very difficult to really get the gist of the news article. You’d probably want to shut up 14 of the people and move into a quieter space in order to hear the article (or, you’d just tell them all to screw off and read it for yourself, but that’s another story). This is a bit what it is like in the brain circuitry of babies. As they develop, brain cells that aren’t being used as much as others die off to allow the more used ones with the stronger connections to work more effectively. As the brain matures, other things happen (like myelination) that help make the newly strengthened connections even stronger.

My point in explaining all of this is that I can already see these neurological changes happening with Sasha. Every day something new and fascinating happens with her. A few days ago, it became obvious that her visual pathways were becoming much stronger because now she carefully studies faces. She’ll stare at you and study every part of your face with obvious focus. Whereas before, she would look at you and her eyes would wander a new direction or go cross-eyed. So, I think her vision is starting to clear up, which is really exciting because she’ll be able to start recognizing people by their faces very soon. She’s also getting a little more active and her movements are becoming a little more deliberate. She’s starting to “bicycle” with her legs a little and is starting to find a voice other than screaming and crying. She’s starting to make those cute baby noises, which I’m really excited about.

So, aside from the really obvious changes, like she’s grown a lot in the last month and she’s obviously gaining weight, and she fits into her newborn clothes now, the more subtle neurological changes are completely fascinating. Yesterday, she looked at me and reached out and grabbed my nose. It may have been an accident, but it’s more fun if I think that she meant to do it. I’m also noticing that, almost daily, her cries are changing. When she was first born, her cries were high pitched and quick, which was way cute (plus she has the cutest pout when she’s crying). Then, they moved into a more annoying sort of lower-pitched grunt cry, where it is like she’s trying to poop and cry at the same time. Along with that shift came the ear piercing panicked-I’m-not-getting-what-I-need-so-I’m-going-cry-so-hard-I’m-going-to-pass-out cry. That’s a fun one and you definitely lose a bit of hearing every time you are exposed to it. But, now her cries are starting to become a little less strained and more, well, cute again. It’s more of a baby voice than a desperate cry for help (though it is still desperate). But, she can still do the crying until she chokes cry. Anyway, it is really interesting, and continues to be a total blast.

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