43. Ali learns about a child's brain
In Winnipeg with her 5 year-old son Guy, Ali has succeeded in her project of producing an English-French-Cree-Indian perfectly trilingual child.
First, through Guy's selective exposure to his basic language, English, by her speaking it to him; then after a year's consolidation of the English, through his exposure to French by her French-speaking housemate Eadie's child Pierre, and Pierre's being Guy's playmate; and then, through Guy's exposure to her Cree Indian house-helper Nikah and weekends among Nikah's community. The speech is not yet adult language, it is a 5-year-old child's, but Guy shows a fluent ability to converse and understand separately all 3 languages. He has become famous around Winnipeg thanks to Father Tim's telling it around.
Ali gets a call from the University; a Dr John Timmons, researcher in neuropathology invites her and Guy to meet him in his office on a Monday morning. So at 9 AM, Ali and Guy - she bright eyed and excited - knock on his research laboratory door. They enter a college lab with black wood tabletops. But, instead of beakers and flasks and Bunsen burners, the shelves and tabletops have wood cages of chirping birds and the floors have wire-mesh cages of friendly white rats who crowd the edges of the cages at the entry of the 2 visitors. Ali also notes a number of mazes - about 6-feet-on-a-side squares of open-top wood corridors, the walls high enough to contain a rat, with exit in a different spot for each maze.
The Professor is a slim man about age 50 with a short mustache and white coat.
"Mrs Ali, I am guessing? And the child, Master Guy?" Ali does not correct his mistaking of her marital status.
After seating them in inner office, Professor Timmons asks Guy: "Hello young fellow, how are you today?" and Guy replies "I'm OK, sir. How are you?
The Professor replies in French and goes on to ask, "How old are you?" and Guy answers, "Five years old" in French. Then the professor surprises Ali by speaking in Cree Indian. Guy replies in Cree.
The Professor, turns to Ali "I must congratulate you on a job well done."
"Have you seen this before, Professor?" Ali is surprised at his relaxed response.
"No, but it is in the psychology literature. I am doing research with songbirds on how they learn the species song and also on rats I train to run mazes. And I have observed in the birds and also demonstrated in the rats that the young have a huge capacity to learn compared to adults - maybe a tenfold capacity- but only during an early-life sensitive period that ends in the human equivalent of 9 or 10 years old."
"What ability?"
"In some songbirds it is easiest to see and study because each bird has one song for mating. In my sparrows, for one example, which by the way are easy for age comparisons with humans because a sparrow-week is almost exactly like a human-year; in the young, there is a period from 2 weeks after birth to 10 weeks when the bird must be exposed to the species song if it is to learn to sing it. If we play the song a few times a day - it takes a week - during that period, the bird will learn it. But if we play it for birds a little less than 2 weeks, - old enough to have the capacity to hear and vocalize - these very young birds will not learn it no matter how frequently we play it. They are just too young for learning. But if we keep a set of birds in isolation until they are ten weeks or more and then for the first time play the species song, these older birds cannot learn it or, if they do, it is imperfectly learned after much training - like an adult human learning a new foreign language. Similarly for the rats: Young rats to a certain age have a huge maze-learning capacity. But once that age is passed they become - like adults - able only to learn and with difficulty a much smaller number of simpler mazes."
"What do you think explains it?"
"I don't think, I know" He chuckles at his play on the words. "I have spent years examining the brains of the experimental songbirds and the rats - I mean the cerebral cortex micro specimens - measuring the neurons, the fiber connections, the synapses. Let me put it simply in analogy: it is like inside a child's or young animal's brain there is a tape-recorder with many blank tapes set to record a new learning such as a new language, a maze-learning memory, or a song once the child or young animal starts hearing the particular form of learning. But this set up - the blank tapes set to record the learning - takes a while from the birth of the baby or animal to get assembled and function. In the songbird it takes 2 weeks; in a child learning language, 2 years. So the sensitive period for learning starts at 2 weeks of age in a songbird and 2 years in a child. But after a set time - 8 weeks in songbird, 8 years in children, the blank tapes have run out and are all filled up and cannot re-record. So, after that time - the end of the sensitive period - new learning is very difficult"
"Wow! A tape recorder and blank tapes! That's a good analogy, Professor!"
"The neuron and its synapse connections to other neurons as a learning circuit is the equivalent of the tape recorder. And I have demonstrated what I say in my microscopic preparations of songbird brains before and after learning and rats with mazes."
"That means we humans too?"
"Yes, but hard to get specimens."
Ali comments. "The implications of this are awesome. If the knowledge could be harnessed to teaching methods of young children, shouldn't we be able to raise a generation of geniuses?"
"Well, there are still many practical problems. Some skeptics - like the writer Philip Wylie - might worry we might end up raising a Generation of Vipers. Sometime I will invite you to our seminar. Now, will you both like a little snack?"
Ali feels humbled by this knowledge of the unused human brain capacity. She is very happy she managed the difficult task of making Guy trilingual and did it well. And he is still only age 5. She wants to keep in touch with Professor Timmons and get all the knowledge she can on the subject so she may plan more special learning for Guy. She also plans to keep up his language skills and not allow these valuable acquisitions to run down and be lost.
For next, click 13.44 Scenes from a Relationship 4
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