It’s a scientific truth many in the field of early childhood development like to parrot: children’s brains are like sponges. But getting to see a child’s sponge-like learning in action, from the perspective of a scientist, requires state-of-the-art imaging and some human subjects — young and old.
That’s exactly what Laurel Gabard-Durnam, an assistant professor of psychology and the director of Plasticity in Neurodevelopment (PINE) Lab at Northeastern, set out to do. In research published this month, she and her colleagues discovered new insights about how early childhood development takes place, adding to a burgeoning literature focused on how caregivers shape their children — and the plasticity of the infant brain.
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Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University
