It is often wondered how visual and sensory stimuli affect a child’s development. While ‘nature versus nurture’ is an extensive and prolonged debate, it is a relevant topic when trying to understand child development and growth. In a recent experiment, rats were split up and placed into three scenario cages: a cage with adequate resources and space, a cage without adequate resources and space, and a cage with an excessive amount of resources and space. After weeks of living in these the scenarios, the scientists collected the rats and measured each rat’s brain radius and brain activity. As a result, the rats living in the cage with excessive amounts of resources and space had a very different brain chemical make-up and size then the rats living under impoverish circumstances. More specifically, the cerebral cortex of the brains in the rats living in great conditions were larger and more developed; this indicates that brain development is dependent on outside experience or ‘nurturing’ factors. This is significant in proving that brain development is affected by living experiences; and now the nurture side of the ‘nature versus nurture’ debate has a solid piece of evidence to back it up.
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