The power of advertisisng - Child Brain and Body Vitamins!!!

I was on Amazon buying some vitamins and one of those based on what you have previously bought, we would like to recommend messages came up with a link entitled Child Brain and Body Vitamins. I obviously had to check it out. Can you believe this?!?! In fact here was a whole page devoted to Vitamin Supplements and Resources for NonVerbal Learning Disability. Imagine stumbling across this as a parent and thinking that a vitamin might be the cure to your child's learning disability... I don't want to say that vitamins and nutrients can't help, but to suggest them as a treatment seems irresponsible. Ahh the power of advertising and "quick fixes"...

"Baby-Talk"

Throughout the year we have talked about communication in most of my classes - how we communicate, with whom, why, etc. I have been most interested in our discussions on how infants and children learn to communicate. I have been fortunate to spend time every week with 17 month-old twin boys. I started sitting for them in September, and it has been incredible watching their development. It seemed that each week they had some new trick or facial expression or word. Interestingly, one of their first words was shoe. And they love putting on and taking off their shoes and others' too. They have had this fascination for almost 5 months. I happen to love shoes, so this has been something I have really enjoyed seeing happen, and have spent lots of time putting on and taking off their and my shoes. It has now gotten to the point that as soon as I come in the door, they come right up and put their hands on my shoes, and say "shoe?" over and over. It has been a really interesting experience because they have made some association between me and shoes; I would love to see the neural net involved with that! So, I am posting a video I took of them playing with my shoes. I apologize for the quality - it was taken with my cell phone in a dark room. **Note - most people (myself DEFINITELY included) sound ridiculous when talking to babies on a video...



The second and third videos are of my niece, and were taken when she was 4 months old. Talk about communication! I am so amazed at her ability, at such a young age, to be aware of and actually be able to engage in communication both verbally and through eye contact. Most incredible to me is her "singing" - is she trying to soothe herself? Is she thinking about a song she's heard? Has she, somehow, learned about vocal intonations and that different pitches suggest different feelings? (And, I know it could just be an infant doing baby things.) Yes, she's my niece, so I am certainly not objective, but I still think it's a pretty amazing thing to see. : )

rollercoaster ride through the brain...?

I am eager to see whether I will be able to use some of the ideas we generate in this class for my HT100 project which is about adolescents and decision-making. I am designing a curriculum to enable adolescents to learn about the neuroscience behind some of their decisions, and to give them a working knowledge of the anatomy of their brain. I am possibly interested in creating an "inside look" of the brain - i.e. if someone was riding a rollercoaster in the brain, what would it look like. Yes, I realize how outrageous this sounds, but I also think it would be very cool if I could make it happen. Even just to explore the PFC and the strategic and affective networks would be something I would really like to do. I figure if any class might allow me to create a "brain rollercoaster", this would be it!

Better Late then Never

So, I should have just created this last Monday, as soon as I was thinking about it. Instead, it's Sunday night. Too much to do already... Fortunately I have "blogged" before - with my students. This definitely makes me miss them.