The Emergence of Context

Try to get a kid to eat their green vegetables. Being the rational adult that we are we attempt explaining to the youth why eating their vegetables, drinking their milk, not doing drugs or smoking, or staying in school are such good things to do because they all factor into the context of how their future will play out. Don’t stay in school, for instance, and you will have limitations placed onto your for how you to succeed in the world; do drugs and things get worse. Life is tough enough; it only gets worse when someone stacks the odds against themselves.

A recent study of the brains of children shows a stark contrast in the biology—and through that, its mechanics—between the younger brain, the older brain, and the points in between. While the human brain physically grows to full size (but not volume) by the time a person is six years old, it does not finish developing until early adulthood. The examples of context and long-term thinking show that children are not apt to have the mental traits of grown-ups. They may not be able to recall context with such great ease, but they do have the ability to recall discrete facts with better ease.

Gray matter grows, flourishes, and neurons—brain cells—develop sheaths of fatty materials on their ends as the brain matures. This biological process forms the basis for growing from individuals of finite facts to people of great associations of context:

“But as people grow, their brains change. Before full volume is attained, the pruning starts. Grey matter gets picked away at different rates in different parts of the organ. Brain cells form white matter as their arms become covered in fatty sheaths that, like the plastic insulation around a metal wire, stop electrical signals leaking out as they zip along the nerve cells. As the grey matter diminishes, the white matter steadily increases. Which is why the brain can mature from an organ of overwhelmingly short-range connections into one with many long-distance links, as Bradley Schlaggar and his colleagues at Washington University, in St Louis, have found.”

Essentially, this process creates the basis for two separate networks—instead of two physical parts of the brain—which develop to be able to simultaneously work out the challenges we face in our everyday lives. Through the use of a technique called graph theory—a versatile tool to measure everything from neural activity to power grid usage—researchers were able to map with some success how these networks act on their own and in coordination with one another. It also offers insight to the notion that adults can better resist impulses in order to focus on long-term goals.

In the end, however, all this winds up summarizing a conclusion that has been in the annals of wisdom for quite some time: The brain is a muscle, like any other. While it will grow and mature over time, how we use it over any given time will help to develop it—or foment an environment in which it is less likely to develop—no matter which decade of age in which we find ourselves.