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What is Infant Visual Stimulation?
"Just as good food and exercise can help our bodies grow, good early experiences can help our brains grow. Now there is even stronger evidence that there is a link between brain activity and brain growth..."
~ The Daily Parent - New Research on Brain Development Is Important for Parents
- Research has found that newborn's eyes see contrasting color such as white, black and red the best.
- These high-contrast colors will captivate and hold baby's attention, encouraging visual development as well as physical activity — like wiggling, kicking, and arm waving.
- Large black and white patterns present the highest possible contrast (100%) to the eye and thus are the most visible and attractive to babies.
High-contrast patterns stimulate areas of the brain forming neurological connections for visual development. This starts the ball rolling for spatial relationships, perception, coordinated movement, communication, etc.
What are the benefits of Infant Visual Stimulation?
- Infant visual stimulation can improve your baby's curiosity, attention span, memory, and nervous system development.
- Babies who are stimulated as much as possible, reach developmental milestones faster, have better muscle coordination, and have a more secure self image.
- Infant Visual Stimulation is an important activity for parents to do for the baby since of the five senses; vision is the least developed sense a baby has at birth.
- Research has found that infants with many things to look at, neuronal connections in the brain will occur quicker which is important for brain development.
"In fact, science tells us that the right kind of experiences in their early years can actually help our children's brains to grow! And, that it can affect how they continue to learn later on in life.
Just as good food and exercise can help our bodies grow, good early experiences can help our brains grow. Now there is even stronger evidence that there is a link between brain activity and brain growth.
Even before babies can walk and talk, their brains are developing. Neural pathways are the connections that allow information to travel through the brain. The more pathways, the larger the brain. Interestingly, the neural pathways that are developed in your child's first three years can act like the roadmaps to later learning. A child with a larger brain or more neural pathways may be able to learn more easily once she gets into school.
One study, completed at the Baylor College of Medicine, showed that babies who had the chance to play often and who were held and touched often as infants, have larger brains with more neural pathways than children who received less attention and care when they were babies."
- The Daily Parent, New Research on Brain Development Is Important for Parents
Regional Hemodynamic Responses to Visual Stimulation in Awake Infants
[Rapid Publication]
Abstract
"The results imply that there is increased cerebral blood flow due to stimulation that is specific to the visual cortex and that infants, unlike adults, show increased cerebral oxygen utilization during activation that outstrips this hemodynamic effect."
This study presents the first measurements using near infrared spectroscopy of changes in regional hemodynamics as a response to a visual stimulus in awake infants. Ten infants aged 3 d to 14 wk viewed a checkerboard with a 5-Hz pattern reversal. The emitter and detector (optodes) of a near infrared spectrophotometer were placed over the occipital region of the head. Changes in concentration of oxy- and deoxyhemoglobin (Hbo2 and Hb) were measured and compared during 10-s epochs of stimulus on and off. A control group of 10 infants aged 18 d to 13 wk were examined with the same setup, but with the optodes over the front parietal region. In the test group the total hemoglobin concentration (Hbo2 + Hb) increased while the stimulus was on by a mean (±SD) of 2.51 (±1.48) μmol•L-1. Nine out of 10 infants showed an Hbo2 increase, and 9 out of 10 an Hb increase related to the stimulus. There was no significant change in any of these parameters in the control group. The results imply that there is increased cerebral blood flow due to stimulation that is specific to the visual cortex and that infants, unlike adults, show increased cerebral oxygen utilization during activation that outstrips this hemodynamic effect. The study demonstrates that near infrared spectroscopy can be used as a practical and noninvasive method of measuring visual functional activation and its hemodynamic correlates in the awake infant.
Abbreviations: BOLD, blood oxygenation level-dependent; CBV, cerebral blood volume; Hb, deoxyhemoglobin; Hbo2, oxyhemoglobin; Hbvol, total hemoglobin; MRI, magnetic resonance imaging; NIRS, near infrared spectroscopy; VEP, visual evoked potentials © International Pediatrics Research Foundation, Inc. 1998
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