Sensory Deprivation & The Developing Brain - One of the best overviews of the collected works and research of James W. Prescott, PhD. There are two fundamental issues. One is the issue of the bonded and unbonded child. The other is full gender equality. Until women are able to control their own body, and not just reproduction but the whole spectrum of her sexuality, it will be very difficult to achieve the first step which is the bonded child. Just look at all the violence against women, the rapes, domestic violence, battered women, it's epidemic, as is child abuse and neglect. So, we have to trace the roots of what produces the violent male?
Video Interviews
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Sensory Deprivation & The Developing Brain
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Culture Shapes The Developing Brain
Culture Shapes the Developing Brain - This is our first in-depth interview with James W. Prescott, PhD. Jim takes us on a detailed overview of the origins of love and violence, and how these two different life paths are seeded in the earliest months of life. Here Jim describes the various research projects that spanned over fifteen years at the National Institute of Health and Human Development (NIHD).
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Social and Moral Consequences
Social and Moral Consequences
Our last video interview with James W. Prescott, PhD., explores the inevitable consequences of the brain behavior research Jim and his colleagues perused nearly fifty years ago. What we call normal bonding is not sweet sentiment or some romantic notion. It is fundamental biology. Deprive the newly emerging brain of specific sensory experiences found in historically normal mothering and that brain will develop abnormally. As these abnormalities become the norm the external culture will express these pathologies in every aspect of our personal and social lives. In his first book, Joseph Chilton Pearce called this the Time Bomb in the Nursery.
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Brain Integration and Happiness
Brain Integration and Happiness - James W. Prescott, PhD, shared his unique research perspective at an invitational symposium, the Intelligence of Play sponsored by Touch the Future. You will find this twenty minute presentation one of the best summaries of the roll sensory experiences or its absence play in early brain development. This program features highlights from the Time Live documentary Rock A Bye Baby.
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Essential Overview Part One - What Is Sensory Deprivation
This twelve-minute presentation is an excellent introduction to sensory deprivation and its impact on the early developing brain.
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Essential Overview Part Two - Touch-Movement Are Critical
This nine-minute presentation shows the dramatic importance of movement in early brain development. It highlights how touch and movement provide essential foundation for normal and healthy early brain development.
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Essential Overview Part Three - Deep In The Brain
This brief presentation documents an historic procedure performed on an adult, sensory-deprived monkey, raised in isolation. The procedure involved removing a thin layer of abnormal cells that formed deep in the cerebellum, one of the most ancient brain centers, cells that were malformed as a result of sensory deprivation (mother-infant separation). The abnormal and often violent behaviors caused by this malformed area ended with the removal of this thin layer of cells. This procedure confirmed that the cerebellum, more specifically the sensory deprivation of touch and movement, were directly related to the pathological behaviors observed in mother deprived monkeys. It also explains why these pathologies are not influenced by the cognitive centers of the brain, our symbolic, metaphoric and abstract ideas. The cerebellum rests on top of the spinal cord, below the social-emotional brain centers and our abstract reasoning centers. The behaviors triggered at these deep regions of the brain happen before the later brain centers are involved rendering our well-intended therapies mostly ineffective. Another reason to insure that the early formation of the developing brain is optimal and not malformed by abuse, neglect and sensory deprivation.