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Heeding the Signs Part 6 BABIES' BRAINS New research into how the brain develops and how the seeds of violence are sown in the womb and in the nursery is providing some intriguing answers that may help predict violence and lead the way to more effective early intervention. Violence, like all behavior, is brain-based, argues family therapist Robin Karr-Morse, coauthor with Meredith Wiley of the new book Ghosts from the Nursery: Tracing the Roots of Violence. "Biological factors like prematurity, the effects of drugs in utero, birth trauma, tiny brain hemorrhages, attention deficit disorder (ADD), or a difficult temperament can render a baby vulnerable," Karr-Morse told the Portland City Club recently. These biological conditions are then compounded by such social factors as immature parents, mental illness, domestic violence, or criminal involvement, she explained. Everything that happens early to a child, during gestation and in the first 24 months of life, creates either relative receptivity to, or relative resistance to, factors that may catalyze violence later in a child's life. "We basically have decided before we can speak our first sentence whether or not the world is a safe place and whether or not we can trust another human being, and it's literally wired into our brains," writes Wiley. "Availability of guns, or the violent modeling on television, are absorbed very differently by a little brain that is rageful and detached, than by a brain that is connected and empathic with other people."
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Date of Last Update: 9/28/01 
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