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Our Mission |
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Our
mission is to promote nurturing touch
through training, education, and
research so that babies, parents, and
caregivers are loved, valued, and
respected throughout the world
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56 CE
Hours
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51.5 CE
Hours
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Sensory
Deprivation and the Developing Brain
by Michael Mendizza
Brain growth and everything that
implies is experience dependent. The
last decade of research reveals a
reciprocal dynamic between the brain
and the environment. Change the
environment and you change the
brain. A sweeping statement, I know,
but true.
For millions of years the natural
environment triggered most brain
growth as increasingly complex
creatures adapted to that
environment. In the last 50,000
years human adaptation has changed
the environment. Today the melting
of polar ice and mass extinction of
species all over the planet
demonstrate how changes in the human
brain are affecting the environment.
Environment and brain are not
independent. They are two sides of a
single coin.
This reciprocal dynamic develops as
millions of sensors deep inside and
covering the surface of the body
contact the environment and abstract
meaning form the sensory information
gathered moment by moment. The
structure of each major system of
the brain is designed genetically.
How each develops however, is shaped
by adapting to sensory, emotional
and later abstract symbolic
experiences.
It is easy to appreciate how fresh,
whole, organic foods nourish the
cells of our body as sun, rich soil
and rain nourish a plant. The same
is true of all the senses, touch,
movement, sight, hearing, taste,
olfactory. The nature, quality,
presence or absence of each
sensation represent nutrients for
the developing brain.
Our body was planted and evolved in
a rich multi-sensory natural
environment and expects to be fed
rich multi-sensory experiences.
Sensory deprivation, that is
limiting, diminishing or removing
all together the quality and/or
quantity of one or more sensory
experience very early in life, as
the brain is establishing its
foundation for life, may alter basic
patterns that brain will use for a
lifetime.
Dating back to the 1960s this
reciprocal relationship between the
brain and environment was studied in
the laboratory by observing the
impact of sensory deprivation on the
developing brain. Harry Harlow’s
famous mother-infant separation
studies ushered in a cascade of
research exploring how sensory
experiences promote or retard brain
growth and development.
Intimate body contact, breast
feeding, being held, movement and
affectionate play provide naturally
a constant source of multi-sensory
experiences that feed development.
From this point of view not
breastfeeding, no skin to skin
contact, not being held, not moving
and playing affectionately are forms
of sensory deprivation, which are as
damaging as a steady diet of junk
food would be or no sunlight to a
very new and rapidly developing
human being.
In many ways our modern life style
and world are deficient in both
touch and movement, both critical
for healthy and whole development.
One example, and there are many, the
World Health Organizations
recommends breastfeeding for two and
a half yeas or longer, something
virtually nonexistent in
industrialized societies.
Yes, some women breast feed but very
few for twelve years or longer. What
most fail to realize is that
pleasure shared through intimate
safe somatic stimulation is as or
more important than vitamins and
minerals, especially when
considering early brain development.
Of course good nutrition is
essential but so are intimate body
contact, sight, smell, taste, touch,
movement and affectionate play.
These are the sensory nutrients that
develop the regulatory capacities of
the limbic (emotional-social-sexual)
brain. An absence of these
sensory-nutrients early in life
retard the whole and integrated
development of what has come to be
called ‘emotional intelligence’
lifelong.
Emotional intelligence is the
natural expression of a neuro-integrative
brain, one that embraces and weaves
together life’s experiences and it
is the limbic
(emotional-social-sexual) brain that
does the weaving. Depriving the
brain of the sensory-nutrients it
needs, again very early in life, has
been shown to cause permanent
alterations in brain development and
function. If the sensitive window
for optimum development of certain
structures is passed, yes the damage
is permanent.
No one knows this better than James
W. Prescott, PhD, a pioneering
researcher who followed with brain
and behavior studies Harry Harlow’s
mother-infant separation (sensory
deprived) research. One of the most
startling findings was that movement
played a central role in the
development of
emotional-social-sexual
intelligence. At ten months of age
the mother-deprived infants who were
raised with a moving surrogate (a
cloth covered plastic bottle)
expressed few of the pathologies
that plagued mother-deprived infants
raised with the same surrogates that
were immobile. During the most
sensitive period of brain growth and
development conception to
approximately eighteen months of
age, movement is as critical as good
nutrition.
(continued)
Also see Pleasure Bonds by James W.
Prescott, Joseph Chilton Pearce and
Michael Mendizza
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Infant Massage USA is the US Chapter
to the International Association of
Infant Massage, with its offices in
Sweden (iaim.net). Our
program is the one founded by, and
continues to be supported by, Vimala
Schneider McClure, author of “Infant
Massage, A Handbook for Loving
Parents” and a pioneer in Infant
Massage.
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