“… GERALDINE DAWSON, Psychologist: What we’re learning is that very early in life there are these periods when certain parts of the brain are being wired and that later in life that then these patterns will be very difficult to change.

LEE HOCHBERG: Scientists had thought the brain’s wiring was complete at birth. But neurobiologists now believe this crackling noise inside the brains of infants is the sound of some 10 billion nerve cells connecting with each other, as in this animation; they’re making the synapses that promote thought, emotion, and physical movement. Scientists now say the capability of those neural connections depends on whether the young child receives proper stimulation. It’s a scientific confirmation of what seems like common sense. It’s important what the baby sees, what the baby hears, even, says psychologist Dawson, whether the emotions he repeatedly feels are happy or unhappy.

GERALD DAWSON: What we believe is that by experiencing different emotions that you’re stimulating different parts of the brain and that this then leads to connections between the synapses.

LEE HOCHBERG: Dawson studied the difference between the brains of infants whose mothers are happy and the brains of those whose mothers are depressed and unlikely to project happiness. She found that in the children of happy mothers the region of the brain specialized for joy showed considerable neural activity. But the brains of children with depressed mothers looked different.

GERALD DAWSON: What we found was that the area of the brain that was specialized for positive emotion showed less activity and the area of the brain that specialized for negative emotion showed more brain activity. In later life an individual like this will be more apt to respond negatively when they’re stressed or they experience a negative event. They’ll be less likely to feel positive about positive events in their environment…”

Its a bit all over the place but you could read more here

This information is very simlar to the Brainwave trust in NZ