Trevarthen, C. (2004). Brain development.

In, R.L. Gregory (Ed.) Oxford Companion to the Mind (Second Edition). Oxford, New
York: Oxford University Press, pp. 116-127.

Brain Development
Colwyn Trevarthen
The Human Brain: Adapted for Learning Meanings from Other People
Compared to brains of other mammals, the brain of a newborn human infant has
two remarkable features. First, it already has uniquely complex anatomy. All major
systems are present, in various states of immaturity. It has core mechanisms of
motor coordination that are adapted for peculiarly human behaviours: walking with
an agile bipedal body; clever manipulation of objects within many senses, and
intimate communication with other minds by facial, vocal and gestural expression of
emotions, interests and purposes. Second, in line with the principle that the longer a
mammal species lives and learns from experience the larger is its forebrain cerebral
cortex, the human cortex is extremely large, even in its half developed stage at birth.
Moreover, it matures very slowly. For a few months after birth its networks are
being transformed, and some of its tissues and axon pathways develop over
decades, responding to exercise and education. The baby’s cerebellum (hind brain),
which contains more neurones than all the rest of the brain, is also exceedingly
complex, large, very immature at birth, and slow developing. It’s intricate circuits
set the timing for sensory control of rapid and skilled movement sequences of an
agile body that walks, talks and has two clever hands. It grows as the body grows in
size and power.
The innate complexity of parts of the baby’s brain underneath the cerebral cortex
includes neurochemical ‘activating’, or modulating, systems of the brainstem that
have already guided the multiplication, migration and growth of cortical neurones
in foetal stages. These same neural systems generate emotional expressions after
birth. The sub-cortical emotional brain and the limbic cortex most closely connected
with it motivate a child’s learning, much of which will depend on communicating
with other people and with the interests and feelings in their brains. Throughout an
infant’s cortex, new synaptically connected neurone systems that are essential for
planning action and for coordinating the senses are being assembled. These
developments both refine perception of objects and increase the precision of
movements to manipulate them.
In ways that science is just beginning to comprehend, the human brain is born
prepared for awareness of people and for sharing their actions and consciousness.
Recently, imitative or sympathetic ‘mirror neurone’ systems have been discovered in
the infant’s cortex soon after birth. For example, territories known from
neuropsychology of adults and physiological research on monkeys to be critical for
recognising other individuals and perceiving their actions and expressions, and for
sympathising with their motives and emotions, become active in a two-month-old’s
brain when the baby is looking at a woman’s face. This ‘mother/teacher-perceiving
system’ of a human baby is essential for the education of speech and all other
cultural skills, including arts and sciences, technologies, social manners, beliefs, and
philosophical explanations, too. Our brains have to learn a distributed
consciousness or community wisdom. Our efforts to share this knowledge are
driven by powerful emotions of pride and shame, emotions that are expressed to

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their companions and teachers by infants long before they can speak.
What Brain Science Can and Cannot Explain
Up to a point, functional imaging techniques, tracking local blood flow or
electroencephalic activity in brains enable responses to stimuli, and even
spontaneous thoughts, intentions, or memories, to be detected and mapped in living,
thinking persons. How different lobes of the brain and the two cerebral hemispheres
become activated for different kinds of mental activity can be observed. But only
part of widely distributed and fast changing brain effects can be imaged, and it is
rarely possible to sample what goes on in a freely moving subject. Research in brain
genetics, neuro-chemistry, physiological activity and plastic developmental change
is filling in details. In spite of these advances, however, we still depend on
descriptions of brain anatomy and growth built up over more than 100 years. Some
who have been trying to find evidence on natural processes of, say, interpersonal
recognition or language conclude that neuroscientists must take a wider view of
human mental life, incorporating insights from social sciences, anthropology and
philosophy, as well as comparisons with the neuropsychology of other species.
And, claims that psychologically and culturally important abilities, such as ‘music’
or ‘language’, have been ‘located’ in one or other structure by functional imaging of
brain activity are not to be trusted. They depend on artificial testing conditions and
selective sampling. They need relating to ‘whole person’ experience in a mobile
body, where consciously intended actions, intuitions and emotional states, especially
those sensed between people, condition awareness, communication and learning.
These are the factors that determine developments in the brain of a child.
Changes in the distribution of cortical activity following regimes of training or
exercise, or exposure to highly stressful situations that interfere with normal rest and
recuperation, prove that the intercellular connections of cortical tissue can be
changed and functions can be increased, relocated, or weakened. People that rely on
different senses for communicating, or who have practiced different skills, have
different functional brains maps. The brains of those who have suffered abuse or
extreme lack of sympathetic company may also be irreversibly changed. The
diversity of brains due to experience is clear, but internal factors of intention,
attention and emotion that direct changes in the brain in different persons, and that
determine temperament and personality differences, are not well understood. Age-
related events of brain growth and behaviour in early childhood reflect
developments in of subcortical mechanisms that have evolved to generate adaptive
body-brain relations in this period of accelerating growth and adaptive response to
the environment. Advances in our understanding of the psychological abilities of
infants and how a child’s mind grows help build a natural foundation for
explanations from neuroscience about how different adult brains work (see
INFANCY, MIND IN).
Discovery of How Neurones Link Up to Make Mental Activity
The composition of nerve tissues has been discovered only within the last 150 years.
In Charles *Darwin‘s day, neurones and their delicate connections were almost
unknown, and Darwin wisely said little of the brain, though he assumed it to be the
evolved organ of the mind.
About 1870 an Italian psychiatrist, Camillo *Golgi, discovered that single nerve-cells
could be stained black with silver or gold particles, so that their fine receptor
branches (*dendrites) and output fibres (*axons) could be seen in brain slices under
the microscope. In Spain, Santiago Ramon y *Cajal used silver-staining to lay the
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foundations of modern neuroanatomy. Cajal pioneered microscope studies of how
the brain develops. He imagined the growing tip of each new nerve fibre probing its
way with delicate filaments, “a sort of battering ram, possessing an exquisite
chemical sensitivity, rapid amoeboid movements and a certain driving force that
permits it to push aside, or cross, objects in its way”. He concluded that formation of
the right patterns of connections depends upon how this ‘growth cone’ chooses a
path through the densely packed tissues of brain and body. He also saw that
developing nerve-cells could move in groups to change their location in the brain.
He drew remarkably accurate conclusions about mature brain anatomy by studying
the forms and connections of neurones in the relatively uncluttered tissues of foetal
mice and birds.
In the 19th Century, surgical experiments with animals located regions in the cortex
necessary for perception in different modalities, and controlled electrical stimulation
mapped territories from which movements could be elicited. Sensory and motor
‘images’ of the body were found, and it was noted that the amount of nerve tissue on
the surface of the brain in these maps was related to detail of experience and skill in
moving. Then, about 1900, methods were developed for amplifying the minute
electrical impulses by which neurones excite one another. Electrodes were used to
record nerve discharges, or to stimulate; and connections were followed with new
precision. The tissues of the brains of many animals were mapped, showing in
outline how the main parts had evolved. A common plan, evidence for common
evolved principles of growth and function, became clear.
During the 1960s and 1970s, closer inspections of the complex arrangements of brain
tissues were made by staining and by micro-electrode techniques capable of
identifying inputs to a single cell and of following its projections to the furthest tips.
(See NEUROANATOMICAL TECHNIQUES) It became possible to trace where a
cell at one point projects to, and backwards, to locate cell bodies that send axons to
that point. With the electron microscope, nerve-cell membranes and the specialized
contact points (*synapses), by which selective chemical communication is
established from cell to cell, can be seen. The electron microscope can also reveal the
intricately folded macromolecular membranes that control nerve-cell biochemistry:
the synthesis of protein or of transmitter chemicals, and other processes.
Biochemical and immuno-histochemical methods show up chemical differences
between nerve cells and reveal the location of chemical communication points on the
cell surface. The anatomical patterns revealed by these methods testify to the
formation of organized cell systems by a process of development and differentiation
more complex than in any other tissue. This is the classical picture of an organ
designed by evolution for psychological functions that control behaviour. We are
more aware now that the human brain maps are changed by environmental stimuli,
and that its organisation is particularly sensitive to the social or interpersonal
environment, especially in early childhood. The task now is to find out how the
innate structure guides this education, and what factors are responsible for
pathologies of development in essential parts of the brain and for psychological
disorders. The brain is not a passive or ‘plastic’ network of interacting cells excited
by stimuli.
Reflexes, Motives and Consciousness: What Develops?
For most of the modern scientific era, descriptions of the human brain have been
dualistic or Cartesian (see DESCARTES). One set of conduction pathways is
imagined to be prewired innately, before birth. These govern essential ‘biological’,

3
mindless or machine-like functions. Somehow, inside these pathways, probably at
junctions between nerve cells, changes in transmission of excitation allow use and
disuse to modify function. New connections make up new combinations of reflexes
by *conditioning, and create purposeful and conscious psychological states. This is
the theory of *Pavlov, based on his experiments on the formation of new connections
between stimulus effects and movements or gland secretions in restrained dogs. His
work gave the physiological foundation to *behaviourism, the belief that the higher
mental, moral, and cultural attributes of a human being are added by learning to the
reflex sensory-motor biology of the brain.
But this theory does not accord with how brains actually develop. First, sensory and
motor nerve cells are in a minority, even in the spinal cord. Interneurones that link
input to output, and determine how such links will be grouped into coordinating
systems, are hundreds of times more numerous, and they develop first. Everywhere
in the brain these intermediate integrative cells, some small, some reaching far in the
brain, form systems that can generate states of intention, attention and emotional
feeling. Interneurones are capable of discharging impulses spontaneously that may
be transmitted widely through the nerve net. This is not an automatic sensory-
motor reflex system.
In foetal birds and mammals, flexibly coordinated movements and rhythmic
sequences of action occur before sensory cells are connected to the brain, or in pieces
of the central nervous system that have been cut off from sensory nerves by surgery.
Rhythmic movement programs are set up among the interneurones, largely in the
brainstem. On the input side, too, the axons of sense cells -- from the retina, from the
touch cells of the skin, etc. -- grow millions of fine branches that end among already
organized and active central networks. These afferent terminals segregate
themselves in such a way that they map the body and the outside world into the
prewired systems of the brain. How the human brain parts grow before birth
suggests that the interacting nerve-cells make up and co-ordinate basic rules for
object perception, for purposeful movement patterns, and for motive states that
construct time and space for action, and that might become conscious of other bodies
and their behaviours, without benefit of experience. This is confirmed by detailed
analysis of what infants can do shortly after they are born (see INFANCY, MIND
IN).
In the 1940s, Roger Sperry (see NERVE CONNECTIONS: HOW THEY ARE
FORMED; BRAIN SCIENCE: SPERRY’S CONTRIBUTION) proved that surgically
rearranged nerve networks of growing fish and amphibia could re-form well-
ordered contacts, without benefit of learning. He ruled out ‘contact guidance’ and
‘electrical field’ hypotheses, and concluded, as Cajal had done, that some unknown
chemical ‘landmarks’ guided the nerve fibre tips to the right location. This
‘chemoaffinity’ theory has been upheld by subsequent studies, but no gene code can
possibly specify, on its own, this cell-to-cell precision of nerve mappings in such
well-ordered arrays as the projections of the visual field. Ordering processes must
involve intercellular effects that ‘emerge’ in the activity traffic of the growing brain
and body.
In 1949, Donald *Hebb identified a fundamental principle governing the acquisition
of adaptive cell assemblies in impressionable brain tissues, such as the cerebral
cortex. Cells that fire together wire together. Synchrony of excitation strengthens
synaptic connections and connects cells in new functional groups. As a result, a
given cell with its synapse-carrying dendrites can participate in a number of

4
assemblies and perform in different functions, for example making representations
of the meanings of different words. There is now much direct evidence of the
formation of neuronal assemblies that store skills and experiences by changes in the
wiring of the brain caused by use, but guided by motivated ‘interests’ of the mind.
The Embryo Brain (Conception to 8 Weeks)
The human brain starts as a slab of identical-looking block-like cells in the upper
layer of a disc-like embryo one millimetre long (Fig. 1A, 16 days). These cells
become irreversibly different from other cells about three weeks after gestation.
Different parts are already designated to form specific relations in the future with
sense organs and muscles in the body. Brain and body of the embryo have bilateral
symmetry, but hidden differences exist between the chemistry of left and right
halves. Brain and spinal cord roll into a hollow cylinder (Fig. 1A, 22 days), then, in a
few days, cell multiplication occurs round the central cavity, and cells migrate
outwards to form rudimentary brain nuclei or cell colonies in the wall of the tube.
Some cells become neurones and others change into non-neural support cells (glia).
At about four weeks, ventral cells in brainstem and cord grow axons out to the
muscles of the trunk, limbs, and viscera, the anterior-most motor cells terminating in
muscles of the eyes, face, and mouth. Sensory cells grow shortly after motor cells,
projecting their input to the dorsal half of the central nervous system (Fig. 1C).
As embryo nerve cells migrate and form patterned aggregates to make up functional
circuits, they communicate by biochemical expressions of regulator genes that can
switch on other genes governing nerve-cell development. There are message-
emitting and message-receiving loci on the cell surfaces. These respond to hormones
and growth substances that are produced by cells in many parts of the body. Once
the network of nerve connections is formed, conduction of nerve impulses adds
power and precision to this cell-to-cell communication. The electrical excitation of
nerve cell membranes causes adjustments in their biochemistry as intercellular
chemical messages are turned off or on, and this builds the adaptive organisation of
primary brain systems.
In this way, the intricate inter-connected anatomy of the brain is formed as a result
of the multiplying effects of many choices in cell differentiation that are governed by
genes acting in the context of development. To effect this, there is much negotiation
-- an editing of connections, with removal of many, so that the remainder establish
functional relations inside an overall array oriented approximately by chemical field
markers of the body set out early in the embryo period. The multiplication,
migration, and survival of neuroblasts, the growth and pruning away of axons and
the reinforcement or suppression of synapses are decided by the molecular
compositions of the surrounding media and nerve cell membranes. Trophic or
inhibitory factors are produced by many types of cell, including non-neural
supporting cells (glia) in the central nervous system. The glia make up a scaffold
that guides migrating neuroblasts and the creeping of axon growth cones, and they
assist in the maturation of axons and synapses. Within this tapestry of interacting
elements, nerve cells take many forms and become differentiated chemically. They
come to contribute different patterns of electrical and chemical activity to the system.
This is how the brain begins its ‘self-formation’ or ‘autopoesis’.
Soon the brain is much larger than the cord, its conspicuous dorsal lobes receiving
axons from the nose, eyes, ears, and mouth (Fig. 1B & E). The hypothalamus, the
foremost ventral component of the brainstem, is the ‘head ganglion’ of the viscera
(Fig. 1D & F). It will control appetites and aversions, and will act as a coordinator

5
between activities of the central *nervous system and the endocrine glands that
secrete hormones controlling growth, metabolic activity, and *sexual development.
Among the first neurones inside the brain to send axons down to the cord and
upward to the forebrain hemispheres are the core interneurones of the ‘affective
nervous system’, which will transmit a spectrum of messenger chemicals to other
neurones and maintain the balance of integrative states in the brain throughout its
development (Fig. 1D & F). By the end of the embryo period (eight weeks), when
the cells of the future neocortex of the cerebral hemispheres first appear, the
brainstem has an elaborate system of projections that will influence the migration
and differentiation of cortical neurones (Fig. 1F). Neuro-chemicals regulate nerve
cell growth and differentiation everywhere in the young brain. They become the
media of dynamic emotional states, which will be expressed in special movements,
innervated by the cranial nerves (Fig. 1F). In the mature brain, the affective nervous
system modulates perception, the formation and recall of memories, and motor co-
ordination.
The Foetal Brain (8 to 40 Weeks)
By 2 months after gestation, the developing human foetus has elaborately adapted
special sense organs in the form of eyes, face with nose and mouth, vestibular semi-
circular canals and cochlea, hands and feet (Fig. 2A). The cerebral hemispheres
appear in the early foetus and increase rapidly in size in mid-foetal stages as nerve-
cells multiply in the cortex of the hemispheres, which are at this stage thin
membranous sacs distended by liquid (Fig. 2B). A second 4-fold increase in bulk of
the cortex takes place in the last two months of gestation and continues into the first
few months of infancy (Fig. 2C). This is due, not to multiplication of cortical
neurones, but to their branching and to the formation of the connections that
integrate the experience-sensitive cortical tissues with the rest of the brain to make
conscious perception, voluntary action, and intelligent learning possible.
The cells of the neocortex, generated round the cavities of the cerebral hemispheres
(ventricles), enter the cortex between 15 and 25 weeks after gestation (Fig. 2C).
Immature cells (neuroblasts) migrate in waves to make a layer called the ‘cortical
plate’, later arrivals passing through earlier migrants so that the youngest cells are in
layers towards the outside of the hemispheres. This flow of neuroblasts into the
cortical plate proceeds at different rates in different areas, the last territories to
receive a full complement of potential neurones, at six months (25 weeks) after
gestation, being areas that will attain mature tissue structure years later, towards
adolescence. Cells in cortex and subcortex that are dedicated to one psychological
role start as neighbours in the periventicular germ layer, or derive from the same
stem neuroblast cell.
Late migrating components of the hemispheres tend to left-right asymmetry (Fig. 4).
How hemispheric asymmetry begins and how it relates to gene-controlled
asymmetries in the chemistry and immunological properties of cells widespread in
the brain remains to be worked out. It is known that abnormal migration, in the left
hemisphere, of one late contingent of cortical and thalamic neurones related to the
perisylvian area, where temporal and parietal lobes meet, can lead to language
disorders, including *dyslexia, which makes it very difficult for a person of
otherwise normal intelligence to learn to generate the high speed processes required
for reading and writing. This is an example of a brain development long before birth
that shows up only years later, in school performance.
In the 40 weeks of gestation a human brain grows to a two-thirds-sized likeness of

6
the adult brain (Figs. 2C & 3B). At birth all the typically human cortical areas and
nuclear masses of the brainstem are there, containing a million million
(1,000,000,000,000) nerve cells in total. But this amazing fact is misleading in one
important respect. The formation of intercellular connections, which take up little
extra space but upon which the function of the brain depends, is far from complete,
especially in the neocortex. There is a huge postnatal manufacture of fine branches
as nerve-cells form effective contacts (synapses) with dendrites of other cells (Fig.
2C). Each mature cortical cell is estimated to have, on average, about 10,000
synapses, the greater part of which develop a few months after birth. The total
number of synapses in the cortex of one person (1015.) is about 200,000 times the
population of humans on earth. Prolific branching of dendrites and formation of
synaptic contacts can be seen in microscope slides of the cerebral cortex from infants,
and comparable developments occur in the even more intricate anatomy of the
cerebellum of toddlers and young children.
How might specific connections be selected accurately to govern mental processes in
this teeming array of minute living elements? On the selection of the right
connections depends the development of skill in motor co-ordination, refinement of
perception, retention of memories of all kinds, formation of a vocabulary, and
development of increasingly critical and precise patterns of thought. The facts of
brain growth do not imply that mental and physical abilities governed by the brain
simply expand and elaborate independently of stimuli. Nor do they give the brain a
passive submissiveness to experience and diffuse response to exercise. True, the
environment matters.
Even in foetal stages the selection of nerve connections depends upon stimuli from
the intra-uterine environment. Serious mental difficulties in childhood can arise if
the mother is severely under-nourished or under extreme mental stress during
critical brain growth periods in gestation. But the process of gaining experience is at
all stages an active one that the growing brain acts to direct. Chemical
communication of the foetus’s body with the mother’s through the placenta affects
brain development, and refinement of brain structures responds to gustatory,
mechanical, touch, and auditory stimulation. The foetus begins to contribute to this
stimulation by moving to change posture, to displace limbs, and to swallow amniotic
fluid, but it is vulnerable, and may be permanently damaged by infection, or by the
mother taking drugs or alcohol while she is pregnant.
In the last three months of gestation, a foetus has a well-developed sub-cortical
auditory system that can hear and learn to recognize the expressive rhythms and
tones of the mother’s voice. After birth, stimuli that identify her by sight and
communicate her feelings are sought and actively taken up by a baby (Fig. 3B).
Those stimuli that are assimilated, especially those that come from the mother and
other caregiving companions, cause selections to be made from among rival
adaptive alternatives in brain structure. The ground rules for recognizing other
persons and for sympathising with their emotions and interests from their
expressions, are innate in the sense that they are formulated earlier, before stimuli
have any effect. The learning takes place as part of a developmental strategy that
must be ascribed to a continuous regulated unfolding of nerve-cell interactions from
the embryo to the adult. While there is a huge excess of nerve cells and connections
in the newborn brain, it is not chaotic, and the elimination to create adaptive systems
is neither random nor the statistical consequence of emerging patterns of relative
‘use’ by stimulation.

7
The Newborn Infant’s Brain
At birth the human being enters a new world. New forces on a body no longer
floating, new levels and qualities of sound, new material taken in by mouth, air
breathed by the lungs and bringing in new substances and micro-organisms, new
stimulation of the surface of the body, and the immense range of new visual
information; all these give the unfinished circuits of the cortex a fresh set of criteria
for selective retention of functional nerve connections. More changes occur in the
cellular structure of the cortex in the first six months after birth than at any other
time in development. Dendrites branch out from large cortical cells and receive
astronomical numbers of synapses (Fig. 3A).
Stimuli to the infant are regulated both by the infant’s movements and by the
behaviour of caretakers who mediate between the environment and the infant, and
the immature brain has powerful control of this caretaker behaviour, especially
through emotional expression (see INFANCY, MIND IN). Indeed, the most
precociously mature functions of a young child’s brain are those that communicate
needs, feelings, and motives to other persons, and that lead them to present the
world to the child in precisely regulated ways (Fig. 3B).
When an infant orients a well-formed receptor array, like the retina of the eye, the
patterning of stimuli due to structure in the environment is translated into patterns
of nerve excitation. Recurring features like the edges of objects and the velocities of
patches of light contribute ‘invariant’ ecologically valid order to nerve activity. This
order enters into the editing and sorting process that grows the sensory integrative
connections in the young brain. This need for stimulation explains why even
minutes after birth a baby appears to be hunting avidly for something to see, and
why babies regulate their looking, giving preference for certain patterns. The brain
seeks stimulation of particular kinds that will facilitate developing circuitry in the
brain (see INFANCY, MIND IN).
For example, selection of the circuits necessary for binocular stereoptic perception of
depth, which happens in a human baby about six months after birth. depends both
on the coincidence of stimulus patterns from the two eyes on cells in layer 4 of the
visual cortex, and on activation of these cells by inputs to the cortex from the
reticular formation of the brainstem. A baby has to be alert and seeking experience
to benefit from the education that visual patterns give to the two eyes at this critical
stage. Controlled rotations of the eyes in precise unison bring corresponding stimuli
in register. The visual cortex of girl babies gain binocular discrimination about two
weeks ahead of boy babies, which suggests that sex hormones have an influence on
the readying of these areas for visual information -- possibly it is testosterone,
produced in male infants for a few weeks after birth, that delays the process of
cortical cell maturation.
In the mature brain, the cortical sheet is composed of columnar territories of uniform
size. Interconnections between its parts, and with structures deeper in the brain, are
arranged so they link columns into ordered systems (Fig 3C). This ordered anatomy
comes clear in infancy, when redundant axons are eliminated and synaptic fields are
sorted out, a process that forms the basis for sharp perceptions and precisely skilled
movements. From four months after birth the massive interhemispheric bridge
(corpus callosum) gains in bulk as its fibres receive a sheath of myelin (see SPLIT
BRAIN AND THE MIND). Interhemispheric communication matures in step with
the development of mature synaptic arrays in different cortical areas over the first
decade or so of childhood. Differences in the size and form of the corpus callosum

8
in adults have been shown to relate to differences in hemispheric representation of
cognitive abilities and to handedness.
Age-Related Changes in Functions of Cortex in Different Lobes of the
Hemispheres
Different parts of a child’s brain mature at dufferent times and have different
‘sensitive periods’ when they are dependent on appropriate stimulation. The
biggest developments in perception and in the formation of cognitive strategies
occur in infancy or early childhood (Fig. 3C). That is the time when serious
deprivation such as that due to blindness, deafness, limblessness, or to lack of
affectionate care, can distort the growth of the brain most seriously. For example,
defects in the optics or motor control of an eye (as in squint) cause the cortical
connections of that eye to be pushed out of action by the more coherent and
regulated input of the other eye. Deprivation of all humane care and emotional
support may cause mental deformity – reflected in anatomical abnormalities in the
brain.
The cerebral cortex has different relations with sense organs and the muscles of the
body in different regions (Fig. 3C). The greater part of all main lobes, frontal,
parietal and temporal, has strong reciprocal connections with subcortical motivating
systems that determine exploratory activities, planning of complex sequences of
action, and integration of awareness for all the senses and the whole body.
Appearance of new functions at particular ages continues throughout life, along
with maturation and aging in the rest of the body, but at a slowing pace. Temporal,
parietal and frontal lobes of the brain grow disproportionally after infancy, changing
the shape of the brain (Figs. 3C & 4). Their surges of development correlate with
changes in motivation for social life and for seeking experience; they are centres of
desire and curiosity for knowledge and for relationships. In early infancy the right
hemisphere and orbito-frontal and inferior temporal cortices develop in relation to
the affective regulation of the mother-child relationship and developments in
communication with other partners. Lateral prefrontal cortex expands
conspicuously in the last months of the first year and into the second year with
developments both in intelligence for exploration and combining of objects, and in
protolanguage (the use of gesture and voice to make preverbal utterances or ‘acts of
meaning’) (see INFANCY, MIND IN). Developments in superior temporal and
prefrontal cortex are both significant during the first weeks as the child’s social
understanding increases and recognition of others’ states of mind increases (Fig. 3C).
Changes are observed at the end of infancy, in middle childhood, in adolescence, in
middle life and in old age. The developmental programme of the brain expresses
changes in motivation, and this affects who is communicated with, and what is
experienced, learned and remembered. Transformation of psychological processes
as new brain parts arrive at functional maturity confers a plasticity of function so
that a child can partly recover from loss of brain tissue by injury or disease (see
PLASTICITY IN THE NERVOUS SYSTEM). The developments also explain why
injury of a given part of the cortex can have different effects in children and adults.
How Language and Other Meanings Fit In: A Brain with Personality and for All
Cultures
Anthropologists and psychologists consider language the hallmark of human kind.
It permits symbolic communication without which traditions of belief and
understanding could not be built up. It powerfully aids processes of thought and

9
reasoning. There was, therefore, some surprise when brain scientists discovered that
territories of the left temporal and parietal lobes, which are essential for language
understanding in the great majority of adult humans (Fig. 4), are already
asymmetric in a human foetus of 24 weeks gestational age -- four months before
birth. Although quite indeterminate as to which language it will learn, the human
brain is set to acquire some language long before it hears a single word.
Complementary pre-adaptations structure, anticipating functions in consciousness
and communication, are seen in different cortical regions of the right hemisphere,
which seems, indeed, to be slightly ahead of the left hemisphere in development
during foetal stages. These underlie this hemisphere’s subsequent superiority in
perception of form, in visuo-constructive skills and in other schematic processes that
are of obvious importance in the development of technology and habits of
interpersonal and co-operative life. These ‘non-verbal’ kinds of human mental
ability may be more directly related to whole body-awareness and self-related
conceptions of the world than the more calculating, logically programmed
‘propositional’ skills of the left hemisphere (see SPLIT-BRAIN AND THE MIND).
The right hemisphere starts life in infancy ahead of the left and it plays a lead role in
the development of an affectionate attachment between the infant and caregiver. It
is more sensitive to emotion in the voice and apparently to the expression of song
and music, and it may recognise the affection of a caregiver more strongly.
It is now clear that the anatomy and function of human cerebral cortices are very
variable. People differ in the pattern of their mental abilities because their brains
grow in different forms. Males tend to differ from females, left-handers from right-
handers and architects from psychologists or lawyers. Some of this diversity of
human minds, and their temperaments and aptitudes, will be ‘preprogrammed’ in a
great variety of outcomes of gene expression in nerve tissue development, but the
same processes are set to respond to intrauterine and postnatal environments.
Among the influential factors are hormones, especially sex hormones, nutrition, and
state of health of the mother during pregnancy, chemical and immunological factors,
viral infections, epilepsy, and trauma. A pregnant woman who takes psychoactive
drugs or alcohol or who smokes heavily can be changing the development of her
child’s brain. Particular risks are associated with birth -- the brain of a foetus or
premature infant is sensitive to its chemical and physical environment, which must
be regulated inside narrow limits. On the other hand, a premature newborn’s state
of body and brain benefits from the holding, touching and affectionate musical
speech of ‘intuitive parenting’.
Brains grow in conversation and in emotion. Throughout a long life, growing and
learning human brains require, and care about, cultivation by intimate and morally
regulated communication. Thus are built personal and family histories, and the
fellow feeling, rivalry and powerful collaborations and conflicts of human society.

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Trevarthen “Brain Development” Figure Descriptions

Fig. 1. The human embryo and its nervous system. A. The first 3 weeks. The neural
tube closes and the brain end enlarges. B. The body, with head and sense organs, is
clear at 4 weeks. C. The first axons grow from the spinal cord, and bipolar sensory
cells grow axons into the cord, and dendrites to receptive endings. D. After 5 weeks
integrative pathways fill the brainstem, while the cerebral hemispheres are
rudimentary. E. At the end of the embryo period, the body is still like that of other
vertebrates. F. The advanced embryo brain has an identifiable core reticular system
and cranial nerve nuclei (here numbered). Basic elements of the visceral brain, of
motive systems, special senses, and of the emotional motor system are present:
Smelling and tasting (1); Seeing (2); Looking and focusing vision, crying (3, 4, 6);
Face expressions, vocalising, speech, facial feeling (5, 7); Hearing (8); Vocalising,
chewing, breathing, gasping, coughing, licking, sucking, expressions of voice,
speaking (9, 10, 11, 12).

Fig. 2. In the foetus, the cerebral hemispheres and cerebellum form. A. By 2 months
all the special senses of the head, and the face, hands and feet are well formed and
clearly human. B. At 4 months the cerebral hemispheres and thalamus are swelling
rapidly, but cortical cells are undeveloped. C. In the mid-foetal period (20 weeks)
there is a great production of neurones in the cortex. After birth there is a
multiplication of glia cells as dendrites grow. The newborn brain has proportionally
small parietal (P), frontal (F) and temporal (T) lobes, and cerebellum (C), compared
to the adult.

Fig. 3. A. The visual cortex of a baby shows a huge development in the first 6
months after birth. B. Infants are ready to communicate with other persons by a
multi-channel system of senses and expressions. This links the baby’s brain
activities to those of the adult expressed in touches, vocalisations, face expressions
and gestures. C. The functions and memories of the cerebral cortex develop over
many years, all learning of knowledge and skills being regulated by emotions and in
communication.

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FIGURE ONE

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FIGURE TWO

15
FIGURE THREE

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