Brain Organizes Itself for Introspection as Children Age

SUNDAY, Nov. 14 (HealthDay News) -- As children mature, increased synchronization between specific areas of the brain alter how they view themselves and others, a new study suggests.

This includes an increasing aptitude for introspection, researchers say.

Georgetown University Medical Center researchers used functional MRI to examine the activity of the five scattered brain regions that comprise what's known as the default-mode network (DMN).

It's believed that the DMN -- which is only active when the mind is at rest and allowed to wander or daydream -- plays an important role in a person's introspective understanding of themselves and others, and in the formation of beliefs, intentions and desires through autobiographical memory, the study authors explained.

The researchers found that the DMN regions don't yet work together in children ages 6 to 9. These areas light up in an fMRI scan (which tracks brain activity in real time), but they do not do so simultaneously. However, by ages 10 to 12, the regions begin to function together and at ages 13 to 19 they're fully coordinated.

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_105546.html


There has got to be a way to speed this up, they will be voters for Christ sake!

then they repent and go right back to pointing fingers at others, it's like a cycle. We need to diagram it.

would facilitate this developmental process. I also think that "fully coordinated" needs to be taken with a grain of salt, i.e. that people can go a lot further along that developmental trajectory than they ordinarily do. Again, I think things like meditation are invaluable in this development, and the fruits of the development are both highly beneficial and almost inexpressible to those who don't meditate.

I think our ancestors got something like that out of gazing into the campfire, etc. and that's one of the "pulls" of a fireplace.

For those familiar with eeg biofeedback, training to enhance alpha-theta produces a similar effect. Incidentally, alpha-theta training has been shown quite effective in treating PTSD and alcoholism.

sounds about right...
anecdotally, i think introspection and spirituality/self questioning gets wired from an earlier age...

my oldest was never introduced into that realm, i was way too young and not stable enough to do sunday school or anything like that with him.
by the time i started to get the family involved (unity, sunday school, drumming circles... anything of that nature), he was 13 and solidly a cynic and just seems like he is not wired for deep thinking of that type
he's 18 now and does not like to talk or think about 'deep stuff'

his two siblings went to lutheran preschool and learned all the churchy stuff early on, they also know how to meditate and love to drum and pray and have a huge sense of the spirit world and how they fit into it...
they are currently 8 & 9

are they different because of their genes? i think it has to do with being introduced to a bigger world and the concept of a great spirit that opened their minds to more thoughts and options and self introspection is a part of that too...

There is not much opportunity for introspection when kids are constantly kept on the go - it doesn't appear to me that they have the time we older folks had. There's rush to school, rush home, after school programs, sports, activities and, in the down time, cell phones and video games. How many kids go out in the summer and just lie on the grass spending hours looking at the sky or studying the leaves on the trees? That's how we developed as a species - according to this it was hardwired as part of our natural development. We've short circuited it.

We've all seen how the least introspective kids are usually those who play sports in school, who are kept busy busy busy. Only now, all kids are like that, sports or no.

That may be the real reason America is behind so much of the world in intellectual achievements, from grade school to academia to scientific research. We are missing a key component of our psychological development.

As I read the original post, I thought the same thing.

When I was a kid, we spent a lot of time with imaginative play -- playing dress-up, playing cowboys (or cowgirls), playing cops and robbers or pirates or pioneers. Thirty years ago, I babysat some neighbor's children, who had never played dress-up, never had a tea party with their dolls and stuffed animals. Even then, their parents had scheduled their time full of planned activities, so that these girls didn't know how to make believe.

If I had to bet, I'd bet that both little girls are now rabid Republicans.