Brain: Brain Development Stages Mother Womb to Death

What happens to your brain when you age? Your brain, home to billions of neurons, plays a crucial role in controlling your body’s mission throughout life. It undergoes constant transformation, starting its work before birth and continuing it even after death. This is the life cycle of your brain.

Your brain begins to form in the womb about two weeks after conception (The action of conceiving a child or of one being conceived). Around week four, the cells thicken on one side of the developing embryo (an unborn or unhatched offspring in the process of development, in particular a human offspring during the period from approximately the second to the eighth week after fertilization (after which it is usually termed a fetus) to form the neural plate, which folds over onto itself to form a tube that ultimately creates the nervous system. Every minute from the time the neural tube closes, hundreds of nerve cells are growing in your brain.

At birth, your brain has approximately 100 billion more neurons than an adult’s. This gives the baby the best chance of developing a healthy brain. However, when you shed the excess neurons before becoming an adult, you lose a variety of shapes at the point of contact where electronic signals pass between neurons, which in turn alters the behavior of the neurons. Some neurons become insulated by a fatty substance called Myelin (Myelin is an insulating layer, or sheath that forms around nerves, including those in the brain and spinal cord. It is made up of protein and fatty substances. This myelin sheath allows electrical impulses to transmit quickly and efficiently along the nerve cells).

These neurons, known as white matter, are able to transmit information faster between brain areas, allowing more complex processes to take place when you’re born. The average number of copses per neuron is 2,500. Over the first few years of your life, your neurons mature and create new cells, increasing the average number of copses (A copse is a small group of trees growing very close to each other) per neuron to approximately 15,000. The speed at which they form copses could be one reason children find it easier to learn things like languages or musical instruments.

It’s also why children’s experiences in this phase can have long-term effects on their development from age 3 until age 10. Your brain starts to remove connections it no longer needs. Previously, neuroscientists believed that all copses operated at a constant, fixed level, but now they comprehend that the use of copses can either strengthen or weaken them, a phenomenon known as neuroplasticity (Neuroplasticity, also known as neural plasticity or brain plasticity, is the ability of neural networks in the brain to change through growth and reorganization. It is when the brain is rewired to function in some way that differs from how it previously functioned).

It’s essentially your brain’s way of ensuring it becomes more efficient with experience and absorbs new information.

The teen year’s link by the time you reach adolescence, your brain has ceased its growth, yet it continues to develop the neuronal insulation, a process that starts at birth. Your brain continues to develop over many years, starting at the back and moving forward, resulting in different parts developing at different rates. For example, the reward-associated ventral striatum develops faster than the self-control and rationality-linked prefrontal cortex (One of the last places in the brain to mature, the prefrontal cortex is thought of as the “personality center” and is the cortical region that makes us uniquely human. It is where we process moment-to-moment input from our surroundings, compare that input to past experiences, and then react to them).

All this might explain why teenagers experience more mood swings than adults. Neuroscientists believe that the difference in development between the emotion-driven part of the brain and the rational part may also be the reason. Teenagers are more likely to take risks or experience addiction compared with adults. Puberty (Puberty is the process of physical maturation where an adolescent reaches sexual maturity and becomes capable of reproduction. On average, puberty typically begins between 8 and 13 in females and 9 and 14 in males), Also brings with it increased activity in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex. The ventral medial prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that relates to self-evaluation. This change can improve teenagers’ understanding of social interactions and their ability to form friendships, but it may also make them more susceptible to social situations.

Early-adulthood anxiety after puberty, the brain continues to develop brain tissue in the prefrontal cortex, which increases connections between the emotional and motor centers. Your brain reaches full development by your 30s, and white matter reaches the highest volume at about 40, but it’s not all downhill from there. As you age, plasticity allows your brain to keep changing.

Research on middle-age adaptation has shown that older adults are more likely to use both sides of the brain for short-term memory than just the left brain hemisphere. Middle-aged brains have also learned to minimize negative stimuli. Scientists have found the amygdala, the part of the brain that deals with emotion, lights up when younger people look at both positive and negative images. However, in older adults, the amygdala exhibits significantly less reaction to negative images. This might be because, as you age, you become more resilient. Decades of experience in dealing with difficult situations activate neural pathways. This is applicable to individuals going through menopause, as alterations in estrogen levels impact the brain’s energy usage, leading to symptoms.

Like hot flushes and mood swings, the volume of white matter also falls and doesn’t recover, but despite this, those who are postmenopausal have higher structural connectivity between some brain regions than those who don’t go through the menopause, meaning that the connections in those regions may become more efficient. The point at which your brain begins to slow down depends on your genes, but on the whole, studies show that the slowing process begins in your 30s and 40s before accelerating in your 60s.

Later life, 70s as you move into later life, your cerebral cortex, which is the outer layer of the brain, thins. This is particularly noticeable in the frontal lobe (The frontal lobe is the front-most part of your brain) and the hippocampus (Hippocampus is an extension of temporal part of cerebral cortex), which are important for memory, emotions, and navigation. Your white matter shrinks, and the brain generates fewer chemical messengers, such as dopamine and serotonin, which leads to slower cognitive death processing. Until very recently, neuroscientists didn’t know what happens to your brain when you die, but by chance, doctors were recording the brain waves of a patient when he died of a heart attack.

They found a change in a specific band of brain waves involved in high cognitive functions such as concentrating, dreaming, and memory retrieval. Just before you die, your brain may recall important life events, which may explain why those who have near-death experiences report seeing their lives flash before them. Flash before them, and your brain doesn’t stop working even when you’re dead. Some studies have found that brain activity may continue for several minutes even after your heart has stopped, if you’d like to read more on the brain.

If you want to learn about how child intelligence develops in a mother’s womb, you must read the article, Mother Womb Intelligence link is below

https://scienceresearchs.com/mother-womb-intelligence-the-institutional-learning-place-before-birth/

Death Experience: Last 30 Seconds of Life is a valuable article for information about the death experience. To read this article, the link is under

https://scienceresearchs.com/death-experience-last-30-seconds-of-life/

 

The more interesting the poem “All the world’s a stage” by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE is the reflection of the above article in literature way.

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;

And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;

His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion;

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

 

Dr. Abid Hussain Nawaz