Brain Connections from Birth and Beyond
The human brain is one of the most complex parts of the human body. It controls our ability to walk, talk, feel, see, hear, remember things, and much, much more! Even though the ability to talk might seem like a pretty basic skill set to an adult, the science behind how we actually learned to walk… to talk… to remember, is fascinating! Let’s talk about it.
Millions of Neural Connections That Keep Growing (and growing!)
Did you know that from birth to age three, babies gain more than a million neural connections every second? Every new experience creates connections between neurons. Scientifically speaking, these connections are known as synapses, and they’re very important to brain growth and development.
These connections enable basic brain functions like walking and talking, but they don’t happen overnight. Therefore, there’s a reason many babies start walking somewhere around age one, and not right at birth. The brain connections (synapses) take time to occur, but gaining more than a million neural connections every second is still pretty impressive!
- At birth, the baby has 50 trillion connections or synapses
- In the first three months of life, the synapses multiply more than 20 times
- At one year, the brain has 1,000 trillion synapses
The bottom line is, stronger connections early in life lead to more functional brains.
Impaired Connections Play a Role in Brain Disorders
Now, let’s take a look at what happens after the first three years of life. Let’s talk about what happens when some of those essential neural connections are damaged or broken.
Think of brain development as a wiring process. Imagine a circuit board where connections between neurons are made and fine-tuned. The connections we use regularly, usually become stronger and more complex, but neglected connections are eliminated over time, which causes problems.
In fact, many (if not all) psychiatric disorders are a result of improper connectivity of some very important brain networks.
Individual Brain Networks for Good Brain Health
Let’s dive a little deeper and explore the complexity between neural connections.
To start, think of your brain as a small country with 4 states (Cerebrum, Cerebellum, Brainstem, and the Diencephalon). Imagine now that each of these brain regions has “highways” that help connect to the other highways in their region, and other brain regions. Similar to how within New York State we have highways connecting cities, and we have highways connecting to other states. These brain highways are called network connections, and healthy connections are essential for good brain health.
But, as we know, illnesses of the brain do NOT follow a one-size-fits all treatment approach. You are as unique as your neural connections. Our advanced fMRI technology, helps us treat complex brain illnesses with an advanced precise approach using TMS.
At Neurotherapeutix, we’ll look beyond incomplete (abnormal) connections. Our research points to many ways a network can fail, and it doesn’t always mean the connection is “broken”; it is just not optimal.
- We go beyond the standard protocol.
- We look for connections with weak connectivity within the network…
- Weak connectivity from one network to another…
- Excessive connectivity within the network, or from one network to another.
- All of these network connectivity issues are markers for most brain disorders.
You’re in good hands at Neurotherapeutix! Our treatment course is guided by a personalized plan that uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to compute brain networks, which when used in combination with our Localite neuro-navigation system, it guarantees the highest accuracy and delivers TMS treatments to the identified troubled brain networks.
