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“NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in NY Academy of Science. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in NY Academy of Science, 1373(1):72-77.
Transcending as a Drive for Development
The central theme of this paper is that natural maturation and age-appropriate experiences sculpt brain circuits. Since grey-matter density and white-matter volume are dynamically changing throughout the first 20 years of life, so different types of experience would be most appropriate at different ages to support the development of optimal brain circuits to deal with environmental demands. Different ages therefore would have different drivers to optimize development during that age.
Brain Maturation
When born, the brain is unassembled: the child has most of the neurons they will have for their life, but these neurons have few connections.[1] During the first two decades of life, a natural process of brain maturation begins with a 3-year burst of connectivity that is then sculpted into adult brain patterns via pruning.[2] Gray-matter density initially increases 0.4-1.5 mm per year from birth to three years.[3, 4] Cortical thickness remains high from three to ten years of age, measuring 1.5 mm in occipital regions and 5.5 mm in dorsomedial frontal cortices[3, 4] Then, gray matter is pruned at different rates throughout the brain, with the greatest thinning being seen in frontal and parietal association cortices.[4-6]
While grey-matter first increases and then decreases in density, white-matter between different brain areas increases throughout childhood and adolescence, as measured by changes in mean diffusivity, radial diffusivity and fractional anisotropy.[7, 8] In early childhood, myelin increases around axons in sensory regions such as the ventral visual pathways and in motor regions, including the internal capsule, basal ganglia and thalamic pathways. In adolescence, myelin increases in axons that connect sensorimotor regions with frontal and parietal association cortices.[9] In general, from childhood to adolescence, local modules first develop as evidenced by decreasing average path length, and increased node strength and network clustering.[9] Then global connections develop with association areas important for attention cognitive ability, and memory.[10]
Effects of Experience
Internally driven changes in brain architecture interact with ongoing experience throughout one’s life. Stress as measured by the number of years spent in poverty is related with lower working memory, smaller volume in the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus.[11] As early as three years of age, the effects of socioeconomic status (SES) is seen on cognitive skills, socio-emotional functioning, physical health, and brain connectivity.[12] In a sample of 60 socioeconomically diverse children, SES levels were associated with the size of the hippocampus, the amygdala, the left superior temporal gyrus and left inferior frontal gyrus.[13]
An enriched environmental also has pervasive effects of the brain. In animal studies, being in an enriched environmental for 2-6 weeks increased the number of new neurons in the hippocampus and the number of long-distance connections with cortical neurons—these remained after animals were moved to control conditions.[14] Voluntary exercise also has consistently been reported to increase adult neurogenesis in the hippocampus and improve spatial learning ability. Voluntary exercise interacts with an environmental enrichment. Voluntary exercise increases the number of new cells generated; environmental enrichment increases the likelihood of the survival of new cells.[15]
As brain circuits mature in the first two decades of life, so different categories of experiences would help optimize brain connections that are being made. We’ll consider the categories of experiences that drive development at each of four time periods that corresponds with Piaget’s cognitive stages: 0-2 years (sensorimotor stage), 3-7 years (preoperational stage), 7-10 years (concrete operational stage), and 11-18 (formal operational stage).
Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 years)—Sensory experiences are the driver for development
Extensive development occurs in the womb. Fundamental brain networks such as visual, auditory, somatosensory, motor, default mode, frontoparietal, and executive control develop during the last trimester, with the motor and sensorimotor cortices undergoing the most extensive development.[16] Despite the development during the last trimester, at birth, the senses are not connected to the respective sensory cortices. For instance, at birth less than ½ of the output of the retina goes to the visual cortex.[17] As light activates the retina, signaling molecules guide axonal growth that map the activity on the retina onto the thalamaus, and map of activity on the thalamus to cortical visual areas that process vision.[18] Similarly, as sound activates the cochlea of the inner ear and stimulates the sensory hair cells, spiral ganglion neurons preserve and connect the firing properties of the hair cells—the frequency, intensity, and timing of each sound—with the auditory brainstem and cortical areas.[19] The motor system also develops with use. A study with 57 infants showed that spontaneous and induced wrist movements led to activation in the contralateral somatosensory and motor cortices, whose magnitude was related to the amount of use of their wrist.[20]
The driver of brain development at this age is rich, sensory experiences—rich not in number but in quality. For instance, it is better to have your child crawl around you when you are cooking a meal, rather than confining them to a playpen with a mobile hanging over the edge.[21] Other factors are important too. The mother-child attachment relationship is key for healthy HPA axis regulation, learning how to deal with adversity, and long term mental and physical health.[22, 23]
Preoperational Stage (3-7 years)—Language learning is the driver for development
The two-year old lives in a concrete world. Sensory and motor brain areas are mature and support seeing and manipulating objects. The concrete world completely absorbs their attention—what they see is their reality. [24] However, by the end of the preoperational stage, they can begin to think about their experiences.
Development during this age is driven by language acquisition. Language frees the child from the tyranny of concrete objects. Words are labels for objects and allow the child to “think” about future possibilities. With language they develop memory, and their imagination explodes leading to “creative play.” They play more with the box a present comes in, rather than the present itself. They understand past and future, and play with these concepts in a rich world of make-believe moving quickly from past to future as their story unfolds. Language is essential to form concepts, develop logical memory, communicate with others, plan and exercise critical thinking.[25] But their thinking is based on intuition and is not completely logical, lacking strong cause and effect, and comparison of ideas. As such, language is the primary driver at this age.
words and so does not develop automatically, but requires hearing words. Feral children—children raised with animals—have little time-sense, crawl on all fours, and growl like animals. They do not speak.[26]
This is the time that you read to your child. Learning language is easy for the child,[27] since their brain connections are at their maximum level of connectivity—almost twice that of an adult.[4] In timing of learning language shapes different brain circuits.[28]
Concrete Operations (7-10 years)—Rule governed experiences are the driver for development
During this period, the child has maximum connections between cortical neurons, resulting in their cortex being twice as thick as an adults’. In addition, the 200,000,000 fibers in the corpus callosum are gaining thicker myelin layers. This speeds up connections between the left and right hemisphere and so brings together specificity in the left hemisphere with global experiences in the right hemisphere.[29]
These changes in the brain are enhanced by rule-learning experiences. Rule-learning rests upon perceptual categorization that emerges as the posterior sensory cortices mature. Perceptual categorization is the ability to group objects by perceptual features. Perceptual categorization—grouping of objects—begins to mature in the preoperational stage and provides the basis of grouping concepts in concrete operations, and applying these concepts to perceptual objects. Now the child is able to link cause and effect. The diversity of experience becomes manageable with rules, and children at this age seek rules to understand and so control their experiences.[30, 31] The neural basis for rule-governed behavior is the interaction of the left and right hemispheres.[32] As infants constantly moved their rattles in and out of their vision to develop sensorimotor circuits, so the 7-11 year old child seeks for rules in every situation.[33]
Formal Operations (11-18 years)—Problem solving is the driver for development
In the concrete operational stage, children can apply logical thought to physical objects. Their thinking is more organized and rational. They can solve problems in a logical fashion, but are typically not able to think abstractly or hypothetically.[33] The next level of abstraction, formal operational stage, requires the interaction of frontal association areas with posterior sensory areas. [32] There are massive transformations in brain connectivity from 11 to 18 years. The cortical thickness begins to decrease at the rate of 1-2% each year beginning around age 10.[2] The connections between the rest of the brain and the prefrontal cortex—the core executive centers—begin to myelinate at age 12 and continue throughout this period.[28] By middle to late adolescence, teens have fewer connections than they did as children, but they are selectively stronger within specific brain networks. As myelin forms around prefrontal connections, processing speed increases, leading to higher capacity of thinking, as well as improved inhibition to resist interfering stimuli and to controls one’s own responses.[34] These connections allow the adolescent to think about thinking; to have a mental concept in mind, and to operate on it. Their thinking is not restricted to concrete or potentially real situations. They can reflect on propositions, hypothesis and other mental structures.
The driver of development at this age is problem-solving activities. You need to exercise these frontal circuits to develop them, the same way the concrete operational child played with rule-governed behavior, the pre-operational child played with words, and the sensorimotor child moved their rattle in and out of vision.[35] So the teenager questions everything. At age 10, rules are absolute—it is a matter of black and white. At age 15 no rule is sacred—all rules are shades of grey colored by the context.[33] However, not all adults function at the formal operational stage.[36] This could reflect the important role that experience plays in brain maturation. If you are not presented with abstract problems to solve, you continue to focus on concrete situations and frontal-parietal circuits associated with formal operations do not mature.
Post-Formal Operations—Transcending is the driver for development
The formal operational stage is characterized by hypothetical deductive reasoning. Concepts and categories exist. They are real. Concepts are so real that they become the basis of arguments, social conflict and wars. The religious wars in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries The conflicts between the Sunnis and Shiites today.
To go beyond formal operations, one needs to transcend language. This is the next suggested driver for development—transcending.
Most education develops critical thinking, problem solving, and creative thinking. We are taught how to use our mind. But current education does not teach us how to transcend thoughts, to explore the source of thoughts. Meditation procedures in the Automatic Self-Transcending category are designed to transcend thinking.[37] Meditation practices that transcend thinking, change our experience of inner self and so transform how we experience the world.[38]
Transcendental Meditation (TM) has been included in this category of Automatic Self-Transcending.[37] Superficially, TM can be described as “thinking” a mantra—a meaningless sound—and going back to it when the mantra is forgotten. This sounds like focusing on the mantra. More deeply, TM practice is described as a process of transcending using the “natural tendency of the mind.”[39, 40] It is a process of minimizing content—the experience of mantra—while maintaining inner wakefulness.[41] Inner wakefulness is defined as a state of awareness beyond time, space and body sense[39] that is associated with higher frontal alpha1 EEG power, higher frontal alpha1 coherence, and higher brain integration,[42] and higher frontal and lower brainstem blood flow.[43]
Two studies have investigated the effects of transcending on cognitive development in children. A matched study compared examined cognitive stage development in 47 children practicing the Maharishi Word of Wisdom technique and in 47 matched controls from a s. Cognitive stage development was operationalized
as acquisition and consolidation of conservation in seven tasks that were
ordered easy to hard: two-dimensional space, number, substance, continuous
quantity, weight, discontinuous quantity, and volume. The
number of Word of Wisdom children mastering all conservation tasks
was significantly larger and the number who were in transition was
significantly smaller than those in the control group. The Word of
Wisdom technique may lead to more rapid acquisition and consolidation
of conservation by de-embedding thinking from perception and behavior
during the practice. Once differentiated, more abstract thinking processes
would be available to mediate performance on complex cognitive tasks.[44]
Two longitudinal experiments investigated the impact on cognitive and
self-development of techniques for holistic personal growth—the Word
of Wisdom technique for young children and the Transcendental Meditation
technique. A six-month study with 37 experimentals and 29
controls reported increases in principal components of psychological
differentiation and general intelligence in experimentals, covarying for
pretest and control variables. Secondly, a 45-week study with 25
experimental and 25 controls found increases in principal components
of self-concept, analytical ability, and general intellectual performance
among experimental participants (analysis of covariance).
These techniques appear to accelerate the natural developmental
consolidation of awareness at a deeper level—the thinking level versus
the perceptual level—and may be important adjuncts to current educational
interventions[45]
The experience of transcending is reported to have positive benefits for students. Regular transcending enhances development of the concrete operational stage. A matched study reported that…, Normal: horizontal decalege, College students. High risk: ADHD, UQiet time