Question: how do babies brains grow??

Joanna Brooks answered on 16 Jun 2010:

Great question! The brain starts to grow when the baby is just an embryo in the womb. The brain starts out as a blob of cells which grow and multiply and become responsible for different things in the brain. For example, some of these cells will form the language part of the brain and some will form the visual part of the brain.

So when the baby is born it has a brain but it is very small (about 0.5 kilograms or half a large box of cornflakes). It is very important in the first few years of life to stimulate the brain to help it grow and mature as much as possible – the brain is like a sponge!

By about three years of age the brain has developed a lot and will produce billions of neurons (cells that pass messages around the brain). The brain continues to develop until adulthood when it weighs about 1.5 kilograms (often more than triple the weight of a newborn baby’s brain).