Unit 03

• Neonatal


  Relating to newborn children (or other mammals). Also referred to as infancy.
• As newborns, we had some basic reflexes, among them crying, kicking, and coughing. We slept a lot, and occasionally we smiled, although the meaning of our first smiles was not entirely clear. We ate and we grew. We crawled and then we walked, a journey of a thousand miles beginning with a single step. Sometimes we conformed; sometimes others conformed to us. Our development was a continuous creation of more complex forms. We needed the meeting eyes of love. We juggled the necessity of curbing our will with becoming what we could will freely.
• Cephalocaudal pattern


  Developmental sequence in which the earliest growth occurs at the top –the head– with the physical growth in size, weight, and feature differentiation gradually working from top to bottom.
• Cephalocaudal pattern


  • Infants see objects before they can control their torso, and they can use their hands long before they can crawl or walk.
• Proximodistal pattern


  Developmental sequence in which growth starts at the center of the body and moves towards the extremities.
• Proximodistal pattern


  • Infants control the muscles of their trunk and arms before they control their hands and fingers, and they use their whole hands before they can control their several fingers.
• In the first several days of life, most newborns lose 5 to 7 percent of their body weight before they adjust to feeding by sucking, swallowing, and digesting. Then they grow rapidly, gaining an average of 5 to 6 ounces per week during the first month. They have doubled their birth weight by the age of 4 months and have nearly tripled & by their first birthday. Infants grow about 1 inch per month during, the first year, approximately doubling their birth length by their first birthday.
• Growth slows considerably in the second year of life (Burns & others, 2013). By 2 years of age, infants weigh approximately 26 to 32 pounds, having gained a quarter to half a pound per month during the second year to reach about one-fifth of their adult weight. Al 2 years of age, infants average 32 to 35 inches in height, which is nearly half of their adult height
• By the time the infant is born, the infant that began as a single cell is estimated to have a brain that contains approx. 100 billion neurons.
• The infant's head should be protected from falls or other injuries, and should not be shaken. Shaken baby syndrome includes brain swelling and hemorrhaging.
• EEG is best used to measure an infant's brain's electric activity.
• At birth, the newborn's brain is about 25 percent of its adult weight. By the second birthday, the brain is about 75 percent of its adult weight. However, the brain's areas do not mature uniformly.
• Frontal lobes


  • Involved in voluntary movement, thinking, personality, and intentionality or purpose.
• Occipital lobes


  • Function in vision.
• Temporal lobes


  • Have an active role in hearing, language processing, and memory.
• Parietal lobes


  • Play important roles in registering spatial location, attention, and motor control
• The cerebral cortex has two hemispheres (left and right). Lateralization refers to specialization of function in one hemisphere or the other.
• Newborns show greater electrical brain activity in the L-hemisphere than the R-hemisphere when they are listening to speech sounds.
• Myelination


  The process of encasing axons with fat cells (prenatal-birth-adolescence).
• Synaptic pruning


  A natural process that occurs in the brain between early childhood and adulthood where the brain eliminates extra synapses.
• Brain cells that are covered with myelin propagate signals faster, neuron cells are looking for connection, and synaptic pruning occurs.
• Some areas of the brain such as the primary motor areas develop earlier than others such as the primary sensory areas. Frontal lobes are immature in the newborn. Neurons in the frontal lobe become myelinated and interconnected in the first year of life, infants develop an ability to regulate sleep and reflexes. Cognitive skills do not emerge until later in the first year. The prefrontal region of the FL has the most prolonged development, of any brain region –with changes detectable into emerging adulthood.
• Children who grow up in a deprived environment may have depressed brain activity. But the brain can demonstrate flexibility and resilience. Neuroscientists believe that what wires the brain –or rewires it, is repeated experience.
• In the increasingly popular neuro constructivist view, (a) biological processes (genes, for example) and environmental conditions (enriched or impoverished, for example) influence the brain's development; (b) the brain has plasticity and is context-dependent; and (c) development of the brain and the child's cognitive development are closely linked.
• Newborns usually sleep about 18 hours a day. By 6 months of age, many American infants approach adult-like sleeping patterns. REM sleep—during which dreaming occurs—is present more in early infancy than in childhood and adulthood.
• Sleeping arrangements for infants vary across cultures. In America, infants are more likely to sleep alone than in many other cultures. Some experts believe shared sleeping can lead to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), a condition that occurs when a sleeping infant suddenly stops breathing and dies without an apparent cause. However, it is generally accepted that the most critical factor in predicting whether an infant will develop SIDS is prone sleeping.
• As infants develop their motor skills, so as their eating movement: from suck-and-swallow to chew-and-swallow. Caregivers play very important roles in infants' early development of eating patterns. Low maternal sensitivity when infants are 15-24 months is linked to higher risk of obesity in adolescence (Anderson et al., 2012).
• Benefits of breastfeeding for the child

  • Fewer gastrointestinal infections
  • Fewer lower respiratory tract infections
  • No evidence that it reduces risk of allergies
  • Unclear if it prevents asthma
  • Less likely to develop middle ear infection
  • Less likely to become overweight or obese
  • Less likely to develop type 1 diabetes
  • Less likely to develop type 2 diabetes
  • Less likely to experience SIDS