Читать книгу The Complete Parenting Collection - Steve Biddulph, Steve Biddulph - Страница 50

The brain of a baby before and after birth grows rather like a tub of alfalfa sprouts accidentally left in the sun – brain cells keep getting longer and making new connections all the time. The left half of the cortex grows more slowly than the right in all human babies, but in males it is even slower still. The testosterone in a boy’s bloodstream slows things down. Estrogen, the hormone that is predominant in the bloodstream of baby girls, actually stimulates faster growth of brain cells.

As the right half grows, it tries to make connections with the left half. In boys, the left half isn’t yet ready to take the connections, so the nerve cells reaching across from the right cannot find a place to ‘plug in’. So they go back to the right side and plug in there instead. As a result, the right half in a boy’s brain is richer in internal connections but poorer in cross connections to the other half. This is one possible explanation of boys’ greater success in Mathematics, which is largely a ‘right side of the brain’ activity (and their greater interest in taking machinery to pieces and leaving the bits lying around!). But we must be careful not to overdo these conclusions, as sometimes parental expectations, practice and social pressure also influence skills and abilities. It’s clear that practice actually helps more brain connections to be laid down permanently, so encouragement and teaching actually affect the shape and power of the brain in later life.