Decades of research in developmental psychology and neuroscience reveal that early stress, particularly in the first few years of life, can influence brain development, behavior and well-being. 

Megan Gunnar has dedicated her career to understanding the relationship between stress biology and neurobehavioral development in children. As a professor at the University of Minnesota鈥檚 and director of the 鈥� which studies how children and adolescents regulate stress and emotions 鈥� she has influenced and mentored generations of researchers. 

After earning her doctorate in developmental psychology from Stanford University in 1978, Gunnar completed postdoctoral training in psychoneuroendocrinology at Stanford Medical School before joining the faculty at the University of Minnesota in 1979. Over the years, she鈥檚 authored studies, including research on the intersection of , and has been a leader in for parents and caregivers. 

鈥淢egan Gunnar is a force of nature,鈥� says Ellen Galinsky, president and co-founder of Families and Work Institute and author of The Breakthrough Years and Mind in the Making. 鈥淲ith a rare background in psychology and developmental psychoneuroendocrinology, she has broken new ground in research on the effects of stress on infants, children and adolescents. She is a gifted communicator, known for phrases that make her findings unforgettable, and a true field-builder.鈥�

As Gunnar prepares to retire at the end of this academic year, she reflects on what decades of research suggest about how early stress shapes the developing brain. In the conversation below, she discusses how her field has advanced, the challenges of modern stressors on children and families, and what parents and caregivers can draw from her field to support infants and young children today. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Why are the earlier years so important for brain development? 

The brain is in the process of getting itself organized during those years. When you add to the development of the brain, it’s on top of the brain that’s already been developed. There are such things as sensitive periods when things get established and then get solidified. 鈥� Nature decided to have these sensitive periods.

What can change during these periods?

Things like executive functions, being able to learn to have inhibitory control. These begin to be established early, but we can work on them. You can work on self-regulation throughout your life. It’s harder later than it is earlier, but it never completely closes off. 

How can adults recognize stress in children?

Parents are not going to run around taking measures of cortisol. Signs that a child needs help are often that they start misbehaving. The canary in the coal mine is misbehavior.

Any parent knows this. A kid is going along fine. They start acting [out] all of a sudden. What’s going on? Bad kids? No, they鈥檙e probably hungry. Or maybe something else is going on that鈥檚 troubling them, especially if it lasts longer. It might be that they’ve had problems with friends at school. They might be worried about something. When they get more clingy or more crabby than usual, that’s a sort of sign that they’re a little stressed and they need some support of some kind.

What鈥檚 the best way to respond?

One of the things that we do so frequently with kids is say, “Don’t do this,” but then we don’t tell them what we want them to do. Any good preschool teacher will tell them what they’re supposed to do. They don’t say, “Stop making loud noise.” They say, “Use your indoor voice.” One of the misconceptions that we have is that kids know how they’re supposed to behave. And if we want to change the behavior, it鈥檚 often easier and better to tell them how we want them to behave.

When a child is feeling stressed and upset, asking what’s wrong can be sort of tough because sometimes they don’t really know what’s wrong. But [saying] 鈥淐ome, let’s sit together and let’s breathe together,鈥� and modeling the behavior of calming down and getting them calmer before you try to probe to figure out what’s going on is a wise thing.

There’s a lot of parenting advice on the internet, especially on Instagram. Where can parents and educators of young children turn for quality information?

Zero to Three鈥檚 is wonderful. If you’re an educator or a parent who likes to read complicated things, then the puts out working papers that go in more depth. [Gunnar is a founding member.] 

I wouldn’t look at any influencer. I just would go to Zero to Three or the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development if it’s more of a health question, and the if it’s more of a mental health question, absolutely not to the influencers. They’re just there to catch your attention.

You were a pioneer in treating child psychology as a science related to other sciences. Can you unpack the term 鈥渂iobehavioral鈥�? Do you think of it as an approach or as a field of study?

Psychology used to be about behavior and how we think 鈥� how we conceptualize and talk about thinking, right? But not about the body that all that was happening in. We’re not a disembodied brain. That’s been the biggest change since I got in the field 50 years ago. 

Now you hear the term 鈥減sychological science,鈥� and that is the shift 鈥� to move from just looking at behavior to looking at the processes and the mechanisms underlying behavior, including how the brain acts and so on. It’s also other endocrine systems, immune functioning, how all of that plays together to influence the way people behave.

So it’s everywhere. And you either talk about it as 鈥減sychobiology鈥� or 鈥渂iobehavioral,鈥� putting words together, but it’s a whole system.

Given your work as an educator, professor and mentor, are there promising avenues or researchers on the horizon?

I think many of us feel now that we鈥檝e filled in enough of the pieces of the mechanisms for how things happen, not that we see the association, but we understand the mechanisms 鈥� and we can continue to do that, but it’s really time to stop admiring the problem and to move upstream and try to change the conditions that are leading to the problem. 鈥� I think around the globe, that is the movement 鈥� to understand how to link the work we do to the policy, and show that certain policies are providing for better health outcomes through mechanisms that we now understand. 

I think there are some really amazing people out there that are doing some really phenomenal work. Many of them are actually my former students, but there are others as well. 鈥� The work is getting more interdisciplinary. The lines between disciplines are just fading, which is really lovely. And I tell students: You don’t want to be a dilettante. You don’t want to know a little bit about a lot of things and not much about anything. You need to be somebody who is an expert in X so that you can be at the table, but you really do need to broaden your scope and be able to work with people from different disciplines. 

If what we’re going to do is not only understand what the problem is, but what are the mechanisms for it, and how do we link that to policy, you’re going to need to be able to talk to economists who want to know the return on investment.

Can you say more about the consequences of not investing enough in early education and early educators? 

I really feel for those educators. They’re not paid enough. And we expect so much of them. And the ones who are laying down the fundamentals are paid the least, and they are often the least trained and the least supported. We just have to get to the point where we recognize that the best investment 鈥� as we’ve been saying for years, as the economists have helped us say 鈥� is in high-quality education available to all children from birth.

How has the science in your field advanced? 

The science has advanced in that we understand more and more about what’s happening inside a kid, biologically and in the brain. But the basic understanding of what children need in order to feel safe and secure, we’ve known for a long time. Now we understand a lot more about the how and the why of it.

The capacity to look at the physiology and how the brain responds has been just unbelievably exciting and illuminating. It has certainly helped us understand the importance of the earliest years in terms of the programming of the biology of stress.

What do you recommend for parents in this moment? 

Are we talking about normal life stress, or are we talking about buffering the children who are living in the areas where ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is swarming and whistles are blowing and people are being dragged from their cars? Those are two related but somewhat distinct issues. 

Given that you鈥檙e living and working in Minnesota, I鈥檓 curious what your thoughts are on the latter.

I am envisioning what it would be like for a child 10 and under, or maybe 7 and under, living in those houses in the Longfellow neighborhood, where periodically, there are . There are men terrifyingly dressed, marching with guns in your street. 

I think the best thing [a parent can] do right now is to spend their evening watching old [episodes of] Mister Rogers鈥� Neighborhood because he was amazing at listening to children talk about their fears without adding to them. If you remember, one of the things he said, about when terrible things happen, is to look for the helpers. If I were a parent with a small child living in those neighborhoods, I would help my child reframe the whistleblowers as helpers coming, rather than emphasizing the scary guys. 

The other thing that I think is really important for parents to remember is that when a child asks a question, and we hear that question with our adult mind, like, “What are those bad people doing?” 鈥� the next step always with a young child is, “Well, what are you thinking might be happening?” So that you come in with your answer where they’re at, rather than this big thing that may be way beyond what they were thinking. 

Disclosure: Ellen Galinsky was Chief Science Officer of the Bezos Family Foundation from 2016-2022. The Bezos Family Foundation provided financial support to Early Learning Nation.

As never before, scientists have access to experimental methods and machines that enable them to understand the neural mechanisms occurring as babies become children and learn to navigate their environment. With every scientific discovery, wonder deepens. The following stories offer a glimpse into some of the extraordinary research at the heart of these discoveries.  

When you see a baby gazing on the world, you might imagine a little sponge passively soaking up information, but what鈥檚 actually going on is sophisticated computational wizardry that outpaces any known machine. Millisecond by millisecond, the baby is sorting multiple data feeds and running statistics to analyze the environment. 鈥淣o computer, no matter how sophisticated, can do what a baby can do in listening to language input and deriving the words, grammar and the sound contrasts that create language,鈥� says language expert Patricia Kuhl, co-director of the Institute for Brain and Learning Sciences at the University of Washington. 

After babies grasp the basics of 鈥渕ama,鈥� 鈥渄ada鈥� and 鈥漛aba,鈥� and understand that they can summon important people and items with a word or two, they soon move on to two key words in human development: 鈥漌hat鈥檚 that?鈥� Babies occupy a world of wonder, and their senses are bombarded with new information at every turn. From their first moments, human infants are driven by the desire to find out. Their investigations are fueled by the same mechanisms that scientists use to develop theories. Babies are exploring their world in ways that are exquisitely intelligent, sensitive and scientific.

Adults are encouraged to get sufficient exercise to support their brain health. As it turns out, cardiovascular health appears to equate to better cognitive function for children as well, with benefits observable as early as 4 years old. Scientists found that preschool children with higher cardiorespiratory fitness scored higher on tasks related to general intellectual ability as well as in their use of expressive language. They performed better on computerized tasks requiring attention and multitasking and showed the potential for faster processing speeds and greater resource allocation in their brains as they performed the tasks.

Fascinating research tells us that the baby isn鈥檛 the only one growing and changing when an infant is born. The intense caregiving required for newborns causes observable changes in the brain of the caregiver: They develop 鈥減arenting brain.鈥� Those changes aren鈥檛 limited to the biological parents, they occur in the brains of everyone intimately involved in caring for the baby. It鈥檚 not just that some people are hardwired to be a parent, people become parents by how 鈥� and the degree to which 鈥� they respond to the child they鈥檙e caring for: The act of caregiving, not simply the act of giving birth, calibrates the brain.

Babies are born with brain connections for functions such as hearing, sight and movement. The white-matter pathways associated with language are also present at birth but continue to develop over the years. Scientists have found that these neural connections don鈥檛 simply grow, they are cultivated by their environments, and research shows that early interactive language experiences uniquely contribute to the brain development associated with long-term language and cognitive ability. The more back and forth between babies and parents, the greater the growth of the brain in areas critical to the child鈥檚 ability to learn language and build vocabulary 鈥� effects that carry through early childhood and predict cognitive and linguistic ability into adolescence.

Pediatric surgeon Dr. Dana Suskind, who specializes in cochlear implants and has authored books on brain development and early childhood development, founded the research initiative that would evolve into the  in 2010 after observing the degree to which differences in her patients鈥� early language exposure led to inequalities in their ability to learn and thrive. These disparities often fell along socio-economic lines. Parents across the board want to help their children get the best possible start in life, Suskind knew, but she saw that they often lack basic knowledge about how to foster early learning. Envisioning a population-level shift in parents鈥� and caregivers鈥� knowledge and behavior, Suskind and her team created an asset-based, parent-centered curriculum 鈥� Tune In, Talk More, Take Turns 鈥� also known as the . 

The program has been in existence long enough now for researchers to study its long-term effectiveness. The conclusion? It works, and it keeps on working. 

When Parents Know More, They Do More

shows that frequent conversational exchanges with adult caregivers promotes children鈥檚 language and vocabulary skills, cognitive performance, brain function and even the . A  by researchers with the LENA Foundation (Language ENvironment Analysis), for example, confirmed that the number of two-way conversations with adults that babies experience in their first three years is related to their verbal abilities and IQ in . 

While all families communicate with their children, studies have shown that children in low-income families generally hear fewer words, shorter sentences and phrases, and are less likely to have books in their homes, setting up disparities that lead to later deficits in academic and social achievement. There鈥檚 a lack of consensus around this 鈥渨ord gap鈥� though. Some researchers have  the validity of these findings, while  call for more exploration of them, but encourage the idea of supporting families with specialized programs to help their children develop early language skills 鈥� which is what Suskind and her team are doing.

The TMW Center has been focused on developing resources and programs to help parents and caregivers understand more about brain development 鈥� and the 3Ts have been core. There鈥檚 a 3T curriculum for families, a 3T curriculum centered on home visiting, and an online professional development course for educators who want to engage with families about the science of brain development, which are all free to use. 

These resources provide parents and adult caregivers evidence-based information about how their kids鈥� brains are developing, and the vital role caregivers play in their child鈥檚 cognitive and language development. 

The 3Ts Home Visiting (3Ts-HV) curriculum, for example, is a six-month program for caregivers of 13- to 16-month-old toddlers from low-income families that coaches parents in their homes through 12 tutoring modules. One module discusses executive function and presents strategies for using talk to regulate children鈥檚 behavior, particularly during tantrums 鈥� and offers guidance to help parents recognize their own emotions and tone of voice. Another addresses the difference between issuing directives versus using explanations to foster young children鈥檚 ability to think things through. (Think: 鈥淒on鈥檛 throw the football in the house because you might break something,鈥� rather than 鈥淒on鈥檛 throw the #$%$# football in the house鈥� 鈥� though the latter is a communication style to which any parent can relate.) Other modules discuss how caregivers can use encouragement, storytelling, numbers and patterns when engaging with babies and toddlers.

Through relatable videos (featuring beyond-adorable infants), parents learn that their young children鈥檚 brains are like sponges, soaking up words and ideas, then using them to make billions of neural connections. One lesson describes their verbal interactions like a piggy bank, with every word like a penny in their account. 鈥淭he more you invest now, the richer they鈥檒l be later.鈥� Parents are encouraged to be in the moment with their child and to talk about what they鈥檙e focused on and to look for opportunities to talk and interact. The subtext: language learning isn鈥檛 something that exists in isolation, but rather it鈥檚 a part of daily life. Everything a child sees and hears shapes their experience, and caregivers are the facilitators who help make that happen.

Evaluating the 3Ts Curriculum

A 2018 study published in the evaluated the 3Ts-HV curriculum and found that caregivers who participated in the twice-monthly visits were significantly more knowledgeable about early childhood development and engaged more with their children in the conversational turn-taking that builds language. These caregivers praised and encouraged their children more, explained more, asked more open-ended questions, and used less critical language and physical control in their interactions with their children.

The initial study showed the effectiveness of the 3Ts-HV intervention in fostering changes in parents鈥� interactions with their children within six months of their participation. A recent  published in October in the Journal of Academic Pediatrics shows that the program not only improves children鈥檚 language learning in their toddler years, but offers sustained benefits to their vocabulary and literacy skills when they reach kindergarten and beyond.

According to Christy Leung, the TMW Center鈥檚 director of research who co-authored the most recent study with Suskind, this simple intervention with a group of families increased parental knowledge when the child was 26 months old, contributed to more frequent parent-child conversational turns at 38 months, and promoted children鈥檚 language skills at 50 months. The study provides empirical evidence that increasing parents鈥� knowledge and enriching parent-child linguistic interactions during their toddler years promotes language development at preschool age. Mothers who received the intervention continued to provide their young children with enriched language input without showing significant declines even after the intervention鈥檚 鈥渉oneymoon phase鈥� ended, Leung says.

When designing the curriculum, Leung notes, 鈥淲e wanted to emphasize that the parent is the best person to educate their small children. They struggled to realize that they are their child鈥檚 first teacher, and they don鈥檛 have to wait until their child goes to school [for them] to start learning.鈥� 

One of the hardest things, Leung says, is to change parents鈥� minds about the idea that educational TV is better than they are at teaching their children, especially at an early age. They think they don鈥檛 have a good enough vocabulary or education to do so. 

Leung adds: 鈥淏ut we emphasized that they are exactly the best resource for their children, and they know their child best. Once they saw that their child learns best from a real person 鈥� and that they鈥檙e learning all the time, even if they may not be verbal yet 鈥� that was a big realization for them.鈥�

Simply put: What parents know matters, and it shows up in their children鈥檚 learning readiness. 

Prevent, Don鈥檛 Remediate

Brain development research has shown that the first years of life are when the brain is growing and developing most rapidly and that the . Early deficits in language learning often accumulate and can affect the entire trajectory of a child鈥檚 life. We know this. But that knowledge doesn鈥檛 jibe with what the U.S. , to help develop those brains. 

Prevention, rather than remediation, is the battle cry for Suskind and her team at the TMW Center, who view parents as an untapped resource in this equation. Their studies point to a doable and easily replicated way of using the  to support families in building the healthy foundations for lifelong learning. (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines the public health approach as one rooted in the scientific method that strives to provide the maximum benefit for the largest number of people.)

According to the TMW Center, 3Ts programs are on course to reach 15,000 families across the U.S. by the end of 2024. Communities and individuals can sign up on the  and receive free resources to implement the curriculum in their schools, museums, libraries, community centers and other organizations. 

鈥淲e鈥檝e gotten such positive feedback from the parents, who say having this experience is unique and valuable,鈥� Leung says. 鈥淲e heard from our curriculum team that one of the moms receiving the intervention saw another mom in the laundromat and said, 鈥楾his is something you really should sign up for. It changed my life.鈥欌��

鈥淭hat touches us so much it brings us to tears,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t also gives us another idea for how we can spread the word.鈥�

Natasha Kulviwat, having been interested in neuroscience and mental health from an early age, noticed that neuroscience wasn鈥檛 making as much progress in mental health diagnoses and interventions as she thought it should.

So, the 17-year-old from Jericho High School in Jericho, New York embarked on a search for a biomarker related to suicide, wondering if there was a way to use neuroscience to identify those at risk.

Kulviwat looked at brain tissue for those who died by suicide and found there was an increase in a protein biomarker in suicide decedents. The biomarkers could also identify genetic vulnerabilities that could lead to suicidal ideation. 

So, for instance, pathologists could find spikes in the protein biomarkers and, along with a self-report questionnaire, could catalyze suicide prevention in the future.

鈥淢y research serves as a small puzzle piece that will hopefully advance the way we view diagnostics for suicide in the future,鈥� Kulviwat said.

For William Gao, his research is personal. Three of his grandparents, who lived in rural China with sparse access to health care, were diagnosed with cancer. 

鈥淧oor health care meant late diagnoses,鈥� Gao said. 鈥淎nd late diagnoses meant grim prognoses.鈥�

During his research, 18-year-old Gao noticed that shortages in pathologists around the world cause long diagnosis times, especially in developing countries. He said this elevates mortality rates in breast cancer patients, for example.

To tackle these health care disparities, the teen from Centennial High School in Ellicott City, Maryland, developed an AI diagnostic tool to support doctors and hospitals in the diagnosis process. Rather than sending tissue samples to a separate lab, with long wait times for results, Gao鈥檚 app creates a heat map, then and there, of a biopsied tissue revealing exactly what part of the tissue sample could be malignant.

Knowing where to look in a tissue sample could vastly speed up the diagnostic process, Gao said. And, not only that 鈥� the app ameliorates the risks associated with patient privacy, since it eliminates the process of transferring patient data between institutions.

Gao said that this is a noteworthy step towards offering more equitable health care outcomes, and he sees room to collaborate with the venture and entrepreneur space to scale the app. 

鈥淚 hope it can be applied in rural areas which can create a real impact and really have an ability to support patients around the world,鈥� he said.

Gavriela Beatrice Kalish-Schur knew from an early age that STEM was for her. But it was in high school that she knew she wanted to specialize in neuroscience, 鈥淚 think because we know so little about the brain,鈥� she said.

She also knew that anxiety impacts many young people, and that current therapies aren’t as effective as they could be, or they鈥檙e very expensive 鈥� or both.

The 18-year-old senior at Julia R. Masterman High School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, said she was interested in understanding what鈥檚 happening on a cellular level with anxiety to help inform the development of more effective treatments.

Her experiment: Make fruit flies anxious. She targeted a certain brain pathway called IRE1, knocking it down in the flies. 鈥淜nocking down is like turning down the volume when you鈥檙e listening to music,鈥� she explained. 

Then she observed their behavior. And like the proverbial wallflower at a school dance, the fruit flies clung to the wall of the petri dish, rather than spread over the surface as they normally would. In other words, the flies exhibited anxious behavior.

Kalish-Schur discovered that these flies had different protein levels than the control group. Understanding the relationship between the IRE1 pathway and anxiety, she said, can lead to more targeted treatments for anxiety in humans. 

鈥漌e can use what we already know and new techniques to develop cures for diseases that harm a lot of people,鈥� Kalish-Schur said.

Perry is best known as the co-author, with Oprah Winfrey, of the bestseller . The book, however, is just one highlight of a 30+ year career as teacher, clinician and researcher in neuroscience and children鈥檚 mental health. His research and clinical experience show the importance of the first years 鈥� and in particular, the first few months 鈥� and he has been a steadfast champion of early education.

鈥淧erry鈥檚 work,鈥� says Dr. Kristie Brandt, director of the University of California Davis , 鈥渉as advanced the early childhood field to new levels. He has revolutionized our understanding of the importance of the first months, without adopting a fatalist position in the event of early trauma. He champions truly personalized care with greater potential for helping and healing.鈥�

After seeing him deliver a powerful keynote address at a Children鈥檚 Movement of Florida webinar this past October, I sought him out to probe his views further and to find out more about the 鈥� the virtual community he founded.

1. Human beings are born curious. Children and other members of our species want to explore the world, and exploration gives us great pleasure. Perry, who grew up in North Dakota, credits his family for his own lifelong appetite for acquiring knowledge. 鈥淢y dad and mom were both really curious people,鈥� he recalls. 鈥淏oth read a lot, and my brother taught me a lot about animal behavior when we went hunting and fishing. He knew the birds of our neighborhood and showed me how to be quiet and observe. So, I learned about the predictability inherent in biological systems, that if you observe them and take enough time, things that seemed completely random really made complete sense.鈥�

Basic child development tells us that if children feel safe, they go explore the world and then come back to the parent or caregiver to get regulated, and then go explore again. When the adults in a child鈥檚 life nurture this tendency, as the child grows up, it can blossom into a willingness to travel, to learn new languages, to sample different foods and so on.  Curiosity about other humans, Perry says, is a powerful antidote to the fearfulness poisoning society. 鈥淲hen we鈥檙e curious,鈥� he says, 鈥渨e become more accepting and aware of the power of diversity.鈥� Diversity is a sign of health in any biological system, he stresses.

2. Human beings are healthiest in community. Perry harks back to early human society, when we lived in clans of 80 or so. Evolutionarily speaking, this is the optimal number of close relationships for brain development, and the health of the community, then and now, largely determines the health of the individual. 鈥淗uman beings are really such social creatures,鈥� he says, 鈥渢hat the most meaningful way to look at and solve problems really is on a systemic basis.鈥� In contrast, the way society is currently constructed, we tend to focus on people as individuals, resulting in 鈥渨ell-intended efforts that fail.鈥�

The child care workforce is a case in point. Citing the widespread burnout in the field, Perry says, the default assumption is to promote self-care. 鈥淵et that only gets you so far,鈥� warns Perry. 鈥淓arly Care providers could have the best self-care model in the world, but if every day you go into a system that grinds you down, doesn鈥檛 pay a fair wage, uses ratios that make it hard to meet the developmental needs of each child, it just isn’t going to work. We have to approach these problems in a different way, taking into account the relationship between economic policy and early childhood, as well as the relationship between historical structures that are inherently racist and the impact that has on physical health.鈥�

Shifting the culture so that early educators feel valued is a project that will take years. To that end, the comprises organizations and individuals 鈥� including educators, parents, policymakers, social workers and students (including middle and high schoolers) 鈥� who study neurodevelopment and make use of the latest research. 鈥淲e try to operationalize these concepts,鈥� he says. 鈥淎nd we’ve been pleasantly surprised at how many people have found this to be a powerful way to understand issues.鈥� The network operates in more than 30 countries and includes several hundred thousand people.

3. Stress changes the biology of the brain. In 1973, during his freshman year at Stanford University, Perry enrolled in a seminar taught by Seymour Levine, a pioneer of research into stress hormones. Epigenetics as 鈥渢he study of how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work,鈥� was still in its infancy (so to speak). He recalls being struck by the fact that a very brief experience on day three of a rat鈥檚 life could have a lifelong impact. 鈥淔rom that point forward,鈥� he says, 鈥淚 was studying it one way or another.鈥�

Thanks to the popularity of books like What Happened to You? and Bessel van der Kolk鈥檚 , post-traumatic stress disorder is a commonly understood phenomenon, but Perry notes that 30 years ago, even many clinicians in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, along with many other leading institutions, failed to recognize it as a legitimate diagnosis. 鈥淭he field is evolving,鈥� he remarks, 鈥渟o I’m hopeful about that.鈥�

Although science has repeatedly confirmed the importance of early brain development across species, Perry remains amazed by the simple fact that if children are safe and regulated during their first couple months, it acts as a kind of inoculation against bad things happening later in life. On the other hand, those whose lives start out rough but then have consistent, predictable, nurturing experiences鈥攖hey tend to struggle. 鈥淚t鈥檚 one of those things that clinicians see every day,鈥� Perry says, 鈥渁nd it has such powerful implications for policy. It’s such a logical place for us to put a lot of our attention and efforts. It just makes sense to take care of the adults who work with young kids. We just have not done it very well.鈥�

A father of five and grandfather of four, Perry reflects that he was lucky to have become a parent before he became a clinician. 鈥淢y kids taught me a lot more about development than my formal training did,鈥� he acknowledges.

4. Touch is good for the brain. The fancy term is the somatosensory system, as the 鈥渘etwork of neurons that help humans recognize objects, discriminate textures, generate sensory-motor feedback and exchange social cues.鈥� Nonsexual hugging and touching are natural and physiologically healthy, Perry contends. 鈥淭oddlers need to be held. They like to be rocked. They like to push. They like that heavy press of a hug.鈥�

In What Happened to You? 鈥渢ouch-starved鈥� is the haunting term he uses to describe many children in our society. Whether it鈥檚 an over-reliance on screens and technology or misguided prohibitions against any physical contact with students, American society is betraying our own somatosensory systems.

鈥淲e need to figure out our relationship with touch in our society,鈥� Perry says. We need to figure out ways to incorporate it more.鈥�

5. 鈥楻esilience鈥� is misunderstood. Because resilience is such an incredibly powerful concept, it鈥檚 important that we comprehend what it is 鈥� and what it isn鈥檛. As he clarifies in What Happened to You?: 鈥淲e often use our belief in another person鈥檚 鈥榬esilience鈥� as an emotional shield鈥� We see the same rationalization and avoidance in the face of large-scale or community trauma 鈥� war, famine, natural disasters, school shootings, the transgenerational impact of slavery.鈥�

Relying on resilience as a silver bullet, Perry, worries, leads to schools in high-poverty neighborhoods to declare that it鈥檚 focusing on this magical quality and then to assign a book on the subject or hold a webinar without taking the necessary steps to address the underlying socioeconomic issues. 鈥淚t’s a weird form of toxic positivity,鈥� he says.

鈥淩eal resilience,鈥� explains Perry, 鈥渋s built from stress, but it has to be predictable, controllable stress.鈥� He cites the example of a teacher who requires students to get up in front of class every Wednesday to recite a poem, which is different from a situation where students are episodically put on the spot and asked to do something beyond their capabilities.

The common thread of all these lessons is the need for nuance 鈥� a quality sorely lacking in many of today鈥檚 debates. 鈥淗uman beings love simple, linear explanations,鈥� Perry observes. 鈥淏ut development is complex. We still have a lot to learn.鈥�

In an experiment that鈥檚 the first of its kind in the world, I-LABS, in collaboration with Japanese and Taiwanese brain scientists, conducted a study of the neural connection between mothers and their 5-year-old children using dual MEG brain-imaging devices. , or magnetoencephalography, is a safe, silent, precise technique for investigating human brain activity.聽The ultra-high-tech device allows brain activity to be measured millisecond-by-millisecond and maps down to the millimeter where in the brain that activity is produced.

Previous research by I-LABS scientists has shown that verbal turn-taking and imitation are essential in young children鈥檚 language learning and social development, and that their language learning happens only via social interaction with other people. But how parents and children coordinate their brain activity during these social interactions has been an intriguing mystery. With the development of a dual-MEG setup, it has become possible to observe those interactions in real time right where they鈥檙e happening in the brains of mother-child pairs.

鈥淗umans are social creatures, and we evolved to learn from one another,鈥� says Dr. Patricia Kuhl, I-LABS鈥� co-director, who holds the Bezos Family Foundation Endowed Chair in Early Childhood Learning. 鈥淪o now the big question is how our brains do that, how they exchange information and learn and feed off each other. Understanding that is complicated from the experimental standpoint.鈥�

In the article 鈥�,鈥� published this summer in the journal Cerebral Cortex, lead author Jo-Fu Lotus Lin, a researcher from National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan with an appointment at Japan鈥檚 Kanazawa University, details the history of testing two interactive individuals simultaneously. During the last 15 years or so, simultaneous recordings of brain activity have been observed using less precise measuring techniques. The advent of MEG has made it possible to precisely pinpoint the regions of the brain that light up during interpersonal interactions. (Until recently, the MEG lab in Japan has been the only one in the world with two MEG machines; I-LABS has now become the only lab in the world with two MEG machines, one of which is a 鈥渨earable鈥� MEG machine, which Kuhl says will open whole new worlds of social neuroscience research.)

For the dual-MEG mother-child study, Kuhl says, each pair of mothers and their 5-year-olds lay next to each other in their respective MEG machines. The mothers then read a phrase and the child imitated the intonation and words of that phrase. As a control, mother and child listened passively to pure tones.

鈥淲ith the MEG machines, we鈥檙e able to see what鈥檚 happening in the mother鈥檚 brain and the child鈥檚 brain during the social interaction,鈥� Kuhl says, 鈥渁nd what we see is neurons firing in areas of the brain related to attention and learning at the same rate in mother and child. The neurons are doing a dance together at the same rhythm at the same time in the same places in these two brains.鈥�

It was a moment of amazement for the researchers, Kuhl says.

Although the study was admittedly 鈥減retty cool,鈥� Kuhl says the research is just getting started. Now that I-LABS has the wearable MEG as well as the traditional one, the plan is to study parents and 5 陆 month-old babies. Fathers will be part of the study for the first time, she says, and researchers will measure the social interaction of mom with the baby and then dad and baby when they are interacting face-to-face.

Another exciting layer to the experiment will be to test the parents鈥� natural levels of oxytocin before and after the social interaction to see if adults who have more oxytocin have more neural synchrony with their child. Oxytocin has sometimes been called the 鈥渓ove hormone鈥� because of the role it plays in social bonding.

The wearable MEG will allow the parent to interact with the baby in more normal face-to-face interaction. The parent will engage with the child and then turn away to engage with someone outside the child鈥檚 periphery to see what happens to that neural synchrony when the parent鈥檚 attention temporarily turns in a different direction.

What the study won鈥檛 do is have the parents completely ignore the baby and focus entirely on their cellphones. The researchers had considered doing such a study but stopped it before it really got under way.

鈥淩ight before the pandemic, we were setting one up with the mom moving her attention completely from the baby to focus entirely on the cellphone,鈥� Kuhl says. 鈥淚t upset the babies so much we said, 鈥楴ope. Can鈥檛 run that experiment.鈥� The one we鈥檙e setting up now 鈥� where the mother rotates to another person 鈥� happens all the time in the real world and the baby will try to get her attention back. The phone thing really tended to upset the babies.鈥�

One of the long-term goals of the newest research is to see whether the social connection represented by neural synchrony predicts other positive outcomes in a child鈥檚 life, such as mother-infant attachment.

鈥淚 think we鈥檒l see that it affects the learning of language,鈥� Kuhl says. 鈥淚 think we鈥檒l see that social interaction is the seat of language鈥攚hich is a fairly radical view. I think social interaction is the instigator, and connections between adults and infants precede and predict rapid language learning because language is so necessarily social. What comes first is this attraction between parent and child, this intense attention being paid where the baby is glued to their faces and voices and that input changes their brain.鈥�

In the dual-MEG study, Japanese researchers had the mothers and their 5-year-olds playing an imitation game, in which the mother would change the pitch of her voice and the child would try to mimic it. The role of neural synchrony prompted by imitation is an important one in human evolution, Kuhl says, and the tangible evidence of that dance is thrilling.

鈥淭hat initial connection is how babies know that they鈥檙e one of us, that they have bodies like us and that they belong,鈥� she says. 鈥淚f you raise your finger and the baby imitates that or open your mouth and the baby does that back to you, that鈥檚 the baby relating to members of the group and saying, 鈥業鈥檓 like you.鈥� That鈥檚 a very critical connection.鈥�

Our society has given short shrift to social needs and the degree to which social interaction influences learning. Kuhl鈥檚 hope is that the research she and others are doing on brain synchrony will help put to rest the idea that social connection is 鈥渏ust soft and fuzzy.鈥�

鈥淚t鈥檚 not just playing. It鈥檚 not being nice or just giving hugs,鈥� she says. 鈥淪ocial connection is a conduit for knowledge 鈥� all of our cognitive, linguistic and social development, all our cultural institutions come through the social brain.

鈥淭here鈥檚 so much more to know 鈥� about that neural synchrony in other relationships, for instance. If you have a teacher relating to a group of students and for some there鈥檚 that 鈥楢ha!鈥� moment where they say, 鈥極h, I get it. Chemistry works like this鈥�,鈥� maybe that鈥檚 the same sort of synchrony. Maybe it鈥檚 quite common鈥攎aybe between husband and wife or two students working on a project together.

鈥淲ith the new MEG technology, this is a field of work that鈥檚 only going to grow,鈥� Kuhl says. 鈥淲e鈥檙e just beginning to chip away at the magic that might be happening when we鈥檙e in face to face contact.鈥�