Edexcel GCSE Psychology

## How the brain forms before birth The human brain starts as a flat sheet of cells in the embryo which folds into a hollow tube, the neural tube, within the first month after conception. The front end of the tube swells into three regions, and these become the three main divisions of the brain: the **forebrain**, the **midbrain** and the **hindbrain**. The rest of the tube becomes the spinal cord. Each division goes on to form structures with different jobs, so the order in which they develop and what each one controls explains a good deal about what a newborn baby can and cannot do. Brain development before birth is mostly a matter of making neurons (nerve cells), moving them to the right place and then connecting them. Many more neurons and connections are made than are kept. After birth, experience decides which connections are used and strengthened, and the ones that are not used are cleared away, a process called pruning. This is why the early years matter so much for learning: the brain is most adaptable when it is building and trimming its connections fastest. ## Forebrain The forebrain is the largest division and develops into the parts of the brain that deal with thinking and feeling. Its outer layer is the **cerebral cortex**, which is folded so that a large surface area fits inside the skull. The cortex is responsible for conscious thought, language, memory, planning, decision making, voluntary movement and the processing of sensory information. Deeper in the…