Since I am also expecting my first and only biological child, I am also very
interested in this question. Newsweek has a special issue out now on child
development, which has an overview of a number of recent breakthroughs in the
study of infant brain development. Things like, during a certain age period,
the brain wires itself for recognizing phonemes. People who are raised in
households with different languages use different parts of their brains when
hearing the same phonemes. The example I've seen is differences in brain
activity when hearing the "r" and "l" sounds, between english speakers and
Japanese speakers. In the former, the brain lights up in a couple physically
distant spots, while in the latter it doesn't.
It's becoming clear that from 0 to 3, the brain gets wired in many different
ways, and this early wiring is both critical, and (so far as we know)
irreproducible. Pretty damn amazing stuff, and the article is highly
recommended. As the date approaches, I'll be searching out the primary sources.
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"An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at
all." - Oscar Wilde