Neuroscience and Karma

Author(s): Jethalal S Zaveri, Mahendramuni
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati

Page 59

Birth; Growth; Aging; Death
As the child brain develops further, the skills that are acquired include language and the capacity to understand conservation of quantity, cause and effect and much else. These later developments are accompanied by physical changes in the brain. For example, if a child, up to at least 10 years old, unfortunately loses the usually dominant left cerebral hemisphere, it will, none the less be able to acquire language in the right hemisphere, which would normally not possess this facility. So evidently the use to which the brain is put fundamentally influences its later development.
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In the pre-operational age (2-7 years), the child's thinking is like a slow motion film representing one static frame after another but lacking a simultaneous encompassing view of all the frames.
Later, however, there is unification of previously distinct processes, either by the overall interaction of the parts or by a dominating superior control. At this time, the child is becoming more socialized and less egocentric. The interaction with others may be a requirement for the maturation. The child begins to pass from personal forms of representations to socialized forms with more general meaning.
Emotional Development
It is obvious from the crying of a child's first day that (i) he is a communicating creature, and that (ii) he experiences something that can be called emotion or feeling, viz. discomfort or pain. The expressions of emotion do not all appear from the beginning but gradually, following a bereditary program. One of the earliest is smile. At first, the baby smiles mainly when he is drowsy but later on it becomes an important part of the communicating system. Laughter seems to develop gradually, later, in response to tickling and much later in social situations. Anger develops later than smiling but full temper tantrums come much later. Surely a child cannot have learned to throw tantrums from his elders. The capacity to do so was inborn and then developed and matured. It involves specific actions of the brain and we shall see later that it comes from the limbic system. Blushing develops later still and more readily in girls. All these obvious facts show us that humans are born with certain capacities for communication of emotional and even moral attitudes.