More experience = bigger brain? Those of you who have children are used to buying them toys with lights, sounds, and movement. Have you ever asked yourself why you buy these types of toys for them? Well, the belief that a stimulating environment gives a child an optimal and developmental setting and also gives them the proper development of its brain has been around for decades. The Experiment In the 1960s, Mark Rosenzweig, Edward Bennett, and Marian Diamond, at the University of California Berkeley, went on a 10 year, 16 experiment mission to find the answer to the question, Does more experience mean having a bigger brain? They used rats as their subjects due to the fact that rats have a more simple and smooth brain unlike those of carnivores or primates. Twelve sets of three rats were chosen from the same litter and were used for this study. Each rat was placed in one of three conditions/environments.
The first condition was a lab cage filled with other rats. The second condition was the impoverished environment which was smaller, isolated in a separate room, and had the rat in the cage alone. The third environment was Disneyland for rats. They called this environment, enriched. Six to eight rats lived in this cage with new play toys introduced daily.
Each set of the rats were placed in their designated living conditions for 4 - 10 weeks. Once the time had expired they dissected the rat's brain to measure, weigh, and analyze the amount of cell growth and neurotransmitter activity. There was one brain enzyme that the researchers were most interested in, acetylcholinesterase. The Results The researchers found that the brains of the enriched
environment rats were different from the impoverished rats in many ways. The cerebral cortex, of the enriched rats, were heavier and thicker. They also had more activity of the enzyme mentioned earlier. These enriched rats also produced larger neurons. This would mean that there had been higher levels of chemical activity. The synapses of the brains of these rats were fifty percent larger than those of the impoverished rats. So, it would seem that the more stimulation you give your brain the more the brain grows or parts of the brain. Marion Diamond said, “ For people’s lives, I think we can take a more optimistic view of the again brain. The main factor is stimulation. The nerve cells are designed for stimulation. I think curiosity is the main key factor. I found that people who use their brains do not lose them. It’s that simple.” In conclusion, keep your brain active, and keep stimulating your precious child. Their brains depend on it.