Movie Review On “The Secret Life Of The Brain- A Baby’s Brain”

In the documentary, “The Secret Life of the Brain- A Baby’s Brain,” an examination of the baby’s brain is looked at in closer detail. Billions of neurons are already present in the baby’s brain by the time the infant is 24 weeks old in utero. The neurons already are in process to begin doing what they are genetically designed to do. These neurons will be with the baby through his or her life. It is in this early phase that these neurons begin to make their connections, which will be reinforced repeatedly to become stronger. When a child is born pre-mature, the brain still has not had the chance to make all the proper wiring inside the brain, which then has to be done outside the mother where it is much riskier. Although many premature babies survive, nearly half of them end up with some type of difficulty in their cognitive abilities. One of the problems that happen for these babies is that they are experiencing stimuli without having the brain function yet to process these stimuli, whereas in the womb the baby is fully supported in everything where the brain can continue to finish making the connections.
The primary purpose of the study done in the movie is to see if the environment changes the development of the brain for the babies born pre-maturely. One of the experiments discussed was the rewiring of the ferret’s brain whose visual stimuli were rewired to the auditory portions of the brain to see how the ferrets responded. The premature baby that is followed in the film was given particular care as a pre-mature baby yet her brain development caught up well.
A second important thing that the film examines is the impact of visual stimulus on the brain development. There is a baby who was born with a cataract who has surgery to have it removed; otherwise the brain will not be able to make the connections if they wait to do the surgery. In these early phases of development the baby needs to be able to see to make the connections. After having the surgery to remove the cataracts, the child is supposed to have the healthy eye covered in order to allow the weak eye to make good connections. Without covering the healthy eye, the healthy eye will dominate the brain and not allow the weak eye to make the connections to see correctly.
In conclusion, the baby’s brain has to have a certain amount of development and connections that are meant to happen in utero, but once the child is born, the baby’s brain continues to make the accurate connections based on the stimuli.