Welcome to Your Child’s Brain
How the Mind Grows from Conception to College

For today’s parents, separating myth from reality is a challenge. They are told, for example, that breast-fed infants grow up smarter. That listening to Mozart enhances babies’ math aptitude. That delaying the start of kindergarten leads to better grades. Princeton University professor Sam Wang, Ph.D.—a neuroscientist, statistics expert, author, and parent—enjoys turning a critical eye on presumptions like these. Using evidence and reasoned thinking, he cuts through the marketing and hype to provide sound and sane advice.

On the evening of Tuesday, April 9, Parents & Science will bring Dr. Wang to The Rockefeller University to talk about children’s cognitive and emotional growth from a scientist’s perspective. His laboratory work, which focuses on information processing in the brain, has shaped his insights into what goes on in a child’s mind—during infancy, in elementary school, and through the turbulent teen years. In his most recent book, Welcome to Your Child’s Brain: How the Mind Grows from Conception to College, Dr. Wang and co-author Sandra Aamodt discuss such salient topics as language acquisition, sleep problems, gender differences in the brain, and the importance of play in developing intellectual interests and self-control.

In the laboratory, some of Dr. Wang’s most intriguing discoveries have emanated from studies of the cerebellum, a brain region generally associated with the coordination of muscle movements. He is particularly curious about the cerebellum’s role in non-motor functions and is using neural imaging of this part of the brain to search for clues to the causes of autism, a major concern of his laboratory. Among many other questions in neuroscience, he and his colleagues are examining the forces that strengthen and weaken synapses, the active junctions between neurons that are essential to every function of the nervous system, including movement, sensation, emotion, and memory.

Welcome to Your Child’s Brain has been slated for publication in 16 different countries and 13 languages. A previous book, Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive, was a best seller. His research has been covered by the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, NPR, and the Fox News Channel, and he is the recipient of many honors, including an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and a W. M. Keck Distinguished Young Scholar Award.