The PBS special "The Secret Life of the Brain" took us through all different aspects of the brain and its formation through life. These five movies taught us that the brain is plastic and is always changing, cutting unused neurons and filling with different ideas and thoughts that you learn from your environment. The five videos go through the five stages of life; baby, child, teenager, adult and finally the aging brain.
The Baby's Brain: Wider than the Sky When you are born your brain is in taking all the different sounds and figures around you. Your brain was developing before you even arrived in the world that you are now aware of. After conception your brain starts to grow at a rapid rate; neural tubes begin to for and they give way to the production of the hindbrain, forebrain, and the midbrain. During the peak periods of life there were 500,000 neurons producing a minute. In the movie we see that there is a newborn child that was three months premature, looking at her she was smaller than her brain was not fully developed to enter the world. Medical researches used her as a subject for "experiments." They wanted to see if the fact she was early she would suffer later in life. To form their research they did a study where they had her in a quiet soothing environment, with little light to form the idea that she was still inside of her mother. From this she was able to grow healthy and live her life with her mother and father. I thought that this was quite a remarkable thing, not knowing if this premature baby would be able to survive without the nutrients that she receives from her mother. I found that with the new advances in technology and will power of the parents that anything the medial doctors can do to help will result in a change for the child's life. As the video moved on there was a child that was born on time but had difficulty seeing out of one of his eyes. The family decided to do something about this. In