|
Peter Huttenlocher (23 February 1931 – 15 August 2013) was a pediatric neurologist and neuroscientist who discovered how the brain develops in children. He is considered to be one of the fathers of developmental cognitive neuroscience.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Huttenlocher Lecture )〕〔 ==Work== He discovered that synapses are created in the first few months of a child's development, and then "pruned", by examining the brains of about 50 people, mostly infants and young children who had died unexpectedly, but also a few adults, one of them age 90.〔〔 Using an electron microscope to count image samples of material, and then manually counting the synapses, he showed that synaptic density was low at birth, about 2,500 connections per neuron.〔 It increased rapidly to levels 50 to 60 percent above adult levels, and then gradually declined, falling to typical adult values.〔 He had originally intended to study defective parts of the brain, but found that: "Paradoxically, in our early studies, the findings in the normal population were more interesting than the abnormal population." The individuals with intellectual disability he studied were discovered to have the same number of synapses as those without, but of a different shape.〔 This "pruning" mechanism removes redundant connections in the brain. Huttenlocher found that in individuals with intellectual disabilities, this mechanism works differently.〔 Huttenlocher also became an early authority on Reye's syndrome, and in 1987 launched the first clinic in the United States for children with tuberous sclerosis.〔 His findings have influenced government policy and parents’ priorities, putting more emphasis on the importance of early education.〔 He correlated the acquisition of skills and the development of the parts of the brain associated with them.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Peter Huttenlocher」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|