Dr Porpavai Kasiannan And we will briefly look  at the infant brain development, which is the   biological, sort of, side of things. I'm not going  to go into great details of this, but just touch   upon some of the salient factors in infant brain  development. So, the human brain development is   interesting in its – in the way it is – it's – it  has evolved. The brain develops from bottom up and   from inside out. So, the lower building blocks are  constituted by the brain stem and the midbrain,   which are the – called – generally called the  “survival brain,” and the upper building blocks   are the intellectual brain, which is the cortex,  and limbic system, sort of, is the inside brain,   which kind of regulates our emotions, our  memory and some of those, kind of, functions. So, if we look at human brain development,   synaptic formation is always dependent on  experiences. So, when babies experience a certain   sensory experience, such as, visual or hearing or  touch, those synapses are formed based on those   experiences. And if we look at the development,  the sensory pathways, such as vision and hearing,   develop in the first few months of infancy and  language develops through – towards the third,   fourth quarter. Starts to develop in infancy,  in terms of babbling, but then develops   further, during the last, sort of, quarter of  the first year of life and continues to develop   further. And higher cognitive functions,  particularly the frontal cerebral cortex,   develops – continues to develop, or continues  to form connections, until - to the mid-20s. So, brain development, the – one concept  to understand in brain development is   neuroplasticity, and in infants, there are  two different neuroplasticity concepts that   are important to know. One is the experience  "expectant plasticity," which requires specific   types of input, for example, light input into  the retina in the first months of life for normal   visual development is important. And another  one is also crucially, some language input for   language development, although it is very rare  to see infants not developing speech because   of lack of hearing sounds and – but there are  historical accounts of, you know, "wolf boy" and,   you know, children who have been found with lack  of human input for the first few years of life,   and they don't have any speech. And it's very  difficult for them to learn to speak aft – if   they haven't had that initial, sort of,  input in the first few years of life. The second type of plasticity is the "experience  dependent plasticity," which is not constrained   to specific developmental periods. It can develop  at anytime during the child development, such as,   learning music or sports, or, you know, activities  such as that. But having said that, the ex – the   skills can develop much more robustly if they  are started earlier in life rather than later in   life. So, it might take longer to learn music and  things if the kids start learning later in life. So, brain development starts in utero  and continues until the mid-20s,   like I mentioned. In the first nine months,  the baby's brain is forming connections   between what they see, hear, taste and  feel, and from about nine to 12 months,   the baby will become increasingly vocal as  their understanding of emotions develop.   By the age of three, the child has around 1,000  trillion brain connections or synapses, the most   they will ever have in their life, because as they  grow older, these get pruned in later development. And what is the parent’s role in brain  development? You know, parents play a key role   in the development of their child's brain before  and after birth. They contribute genes that,   to a smaller or larger extent, determines  their infant’s temperament and behaviour, and   after birth, parents are still influencing their  child's brain through environment they provide,   and also by their interactions, particularly by a  concept called “serve and return,” like in tennis.   So, in this interaction there is a mutual serve  and return between the child, or the infant,   and the parent. So, the infant coos or makes  a sound, and the parent returns the serve by   making a similar sound, making eye  contact, or associated with cuddles or,   you know, smiles. And the baby returns the serve  from the parent, and the parent returns the serve,   so on and so forth. This kind of serve  and return actually increases the synaptic   connections within the brain and improves  the development of skills within the infant. And animal studies have shown that significant  maternal stress during pregnancy and poor   maternal care during infancy, they both affect  the developing stress system in young animals,   and they can even alter genes that  are involved in the brain development.   And in human infants, toxic stress, which is  stress that cannot be tolerated, you know,   can potentially affect the brain architecture.  So, the toxic stress in infants would be where   there is severe neglect, where there is  severe family violence or domestic violence,   physical abuse, and so on and so forth,  and this can potentially affect the brain   architecture and future development  of emotional and behavioural issues. Okay, we have looked at the theories of  development, the brain development, and now   we will move onto what are the developing domains  in the in – in infancy that influence parenting?   So, when we look at the domains of infant  development, the – we know that – we've   just looked at how there is growing complexity of  the nervous system and the children grow. There   is alterations in the shape and capacity of the  infant’s body, there is sharpening of sensory and   perceptual capacities, and there is increases in  abilities to make sense of, understand and master   objects in the world. And babies gradually, you  know, learn communication skills, and emergence   of characteristic personal and social styles,  individual personality starts developing in –   during infancy. And they also form specific bonds,  or attachment patterns, with their caregivers. One of the domains is state, so state in which  the infant is in. Infants vary in how soon they   establish a predictable schedule of behavioural  states, for example, you know, whether they are   in a calm state or in an agitated state or upset  state, and how their regularity is, or lack of   regularity. Do they have a good sleep-wake pattern  or good feeding pattern in terms of schedules?   All these have critical implications for infant  care, and, also, you know, the wellbeing of the   parents. Because the lesser the regularity, it's  very difficult for parents to look after infants. It is estimated that mothers lose an  average of 350 hours of sleep during   their infant’s first year, mainly because  of the multiple awakenings of their infant   and that mothers experience negative effects  of the sleep deprivation, without even being   fully aware that they are sleep deprived. And,  also, infants who are temperamentally fretful,   they elicit different patterns of interactions  than do infants who cry only infrequently. So,   it is quite understandable, you know, children  who are more irritable, they do elicit, you know,   a fearful response from the parents, or a  frustrated response from the parents. And, also,   the amount of time infants spend in different  states determines how they are with the parents.   For example, usually babies are usually with the  mothers when they are awake and they're alone when   sleep in the Western, sort of, situation, but in  many Eastern and Southeastern – Southeast Asian   countries the babies are with the parents all  the time because they co-sleep with the parents. And cultural determinants also, sort of, impact  on how the infant’s state influence the parenting,   for example, in the Kipsigis tribe of Kenya, the  infants are always carried around on the back of   their mothers while they go about their day-to-day  work, and the infants sleep next to their mother   and feed whenever, you know, they need or want.  So, they don't actually have a regular cycle of,   you know, sleeping through the night and,  you know, awake during the day. They fall   asleep when they are being carried around,  they have naps during the day, and they   might have interrupted sleep during the  night. When compared to the American baby   or an Australian baby, they would, you know,  be expected to have this, you know, sleep-wake   cycle sorted out by the end of the first year, or  even by the end of the first few months of life. And there's – the second domain is the  "physical stature and psychomotor ability"   influences how parents in – parent  their infants. So, in the first year,   babies grow half their birth length  and their weight triples, you know,   from the birth weight. There's significant  advances in motor skills. By walking,   infants establish independence, capacity for  exploration, maturity and self-mindedness. And   again, parental cultural expectations play a  major role in infant development. For example,   some cultures expect the infants to sit and  move sooner than other cultures where they   get carried around for quite a bit and they don't  start moving independently until a little later. The other domain that infants develop is  perceiving and thinking, you know. Although   infants are infants, they have an active mental  life. They are constantly learning and developing,   and newborns are, as we said, are equipped  to hear, orient to and to distinguish sound,   and are especially primed to perceive and to  appreciate sound in the dynamic form and range   of adult speech. So, that's very evident  that adults also modulate their speech   in a way to suit the infants. Somehow,  intuitively they do that. And newborns   can identify particular voices, especially  mothers, and evidence suggests that newborns   have developed a good sense of smell,  as well. Infants discriminate among   facial expressions associated with different  emotions by about four to five months of age,   and they can even distinguish variations in some  emotional expressions. And they have gaze, I mean,   develop gaze and eye-to-eye contact  very early on in the development. Infants can imitate too. You know, they can  poke their tongues out, when tongue – you know,   when adults poke tongue, but there is a little bit  of – more than a little bit of debate about what   infants can imitate and how early they can  imitate. As a huge amount of – some schools   saying that they can imitate from very young  onwards, whereas others don't agree with it. So,   the verdict's still out there. However, there  is no debate that observational learning starts   from infancy. Whether they imitate or not, they –  early or not, they still learn by observation, and   as we have discussed before, infancy culminates  with the development of representational thinking   and language. Another development that happens  is play. So, when the infants are younger, it's   generally sensorimotor manipulation of mouthing  toys or shaking rattles or, you know, those kind   of activities. To symbolic play by the second  year, where they're picking up an object and   pretending to be talking on the phone, or swiping,  as they do see adults doing on their phones, etc. Then comes the language development and  understanding of communications. So,   when infants are younger, their com – their  only way of communication is by crying,   when they’re newborn. And so smiling happens, you  know, very soon, and then slowly, they organise   speech sounds by babbling. The repertoire of  communication increases to include gestures,   you know, with pointing, showing and  growing range of other social signals.   The motivation to learn language or acquire  language is a social phenomena, and is bor –   very much tied to the interaction with others,  particularly the parents in the environment. Another important milestone of  development is joint attention. So,   joint attention is a behaviour where two  people share a focus on an object or event.   This interaction is crucial for better social  engagement and communication. So, the infants   are usually able to pr – you know, you know,  do joint attention activities by about seven,   eight, nine months of age, and if that is not  developing, it is usually a red flag for possibly   underlying neurodevelopmental disorder, such as  autism. In the space of approximately two years,   infants master the basics of language,  espec – in the context of infant-adult   social communication, and this happens  without explicit instruction, teaching,   without any effort, but they always speak  the language to which they have been exposed. Babies are also able to express their  emotions, and they also – we talked about   “temperament” early on. This is usually  supported by the mothers and caregivers   earlier on in life. By the middle of the  first year, second-half of first year,   parents’ emotional expressions become meaningful  to infants, so they can look at the parents and   they will smile or frown or cry, depending upon  what they interpret from the parent’s emotional   expression. And they respond emotionally to  affective expressions they observe in other   people, and they can show signs of distress  when they are witnessing angry interactions.   And this has been quite widely studied in  the context of family violence and trauma.   And temperamental differences in – also  influences how parents respond to infants. We saw in the goodness-of-fit that, you know,  certain temperaments can elicit a negative   response from parents, whereas certain  temperaments don't. And if the parents   are able to be flexible and match their  responsiveness to the child's temperament,   there is less distress and conflict in the  relationship. Again, cultural variation shapes the   interaction between infant emotional expression or  temperament and parenting, because some cultures,   by nature, encourage emotional expression right  from very young age onwards, whereas some cultures   do not. And so, those things will  develop a little bit differently   compared to the cultures which  encourage emotional expressions. Infants also have a wide-ranging and interesting  social life, right from birth onwards. By about   two months of age, they're already engaging in  complex and responsive interactions with the   mothers. These are called “protoconversations,”  and this is quite evid – you know, when you talk   to mothers, they can see how they have exchange  with their infants. Which, you know – whether   it is through – you know, by mutual, sort of,  give and take exchanges in the form of cooing,   gazing, smiles, grunts and so on. And infants  also develop a sense of shared experience,   termed “intersubjectivity,” coin  – a term coined by Trevarthen. The development of emotional relationships  with other people, mainly parents,   constitutes one of the most important  aspects of social developments in infancy,   and as some - study by Ainsworth and Bowlby.  So, this, the – espec – particularly in the   attachment relationships, and they’re,  kind of, also, sort of, the foundation   for aspects of social development. Infant-mother  interactions have also been referred to as the   “cradle of social understanding,” for how they  presumably colour later social relationships. Another aspect of infancy that influences or  impacts parenting is the change in development   that happens in infancy. It is a – infancy is a  phase of dynamic change. There is always something   that is changing, you know, day-to-day, if not,  you know, hour-to-hour kind of changes. So,   there is a parallel and rapid growth in  biological, psychological and social skills.   It's generally not a linear kind of development,  it is non-linear in nature, it could be, like,   a stepwise progression. There could be  stalling in the development sometimes,   and sometimes they can have temporary regressions  in the development, depending on the context. As infant matures and is exposed to new  experiences, changes can happen in many   levels at the same time. Even though the  dynamic change is rapid and non-linear,   there can be individual variations  in infants. For example, some infants   start to walk early, compared to others, who  – you know, by nine months or ten months,   and whereas other infants might walk only by  15 months. And some infants have, you know,   30 words by the end of, you know, 13/14 months and  some infants may just have only a few words, and   even comprehension of words, again, could be  different. All these things are – doesn't mean   that there is a developmental delay, but there  is an individual variation in the development. So, for parents, it means that it's almost they're  trying to deal with a moving target. You know,   one day the infant is crawling, and the next  day they are walking. And so they have to start,   sort of, looking at keeping things safe from  the infant’s reach so that they don't get hurt.   Parents are constantly trying to, sort of,  figure out what's going on in the baby's   head so they can prepare themselves and the  baby for the next stage of development. And   the biology and the culture that parents come  from equip the parents to respond, understand and   interpret infancy and its vicissitudes, because  I think this is something that, you know, that   is not overtly obvious, but parents have, sort  of, innate, kind of, instincts and things - and   the things that they have learned from their  own culture that they use in their parenting.