The Little Things You Lose as You Get Older

By: Neftun Choudhury

The Little Things You Lose as You Get Older

    Childhood has a certain charm. You may think it’s just sentimental nostalgia, but it’s not; it’s neurobiology. Children's days don't flow like those of adults since their brains are still developing their own sense of time. The hippocampus is still developing its memory-stamping skills. Furthermore, the prefrontal cortex is just now starting to coordinate the past and the future. Thus, waiting for a birthday can span what seems like an entire era, and a single afternoon can feel like its own season. Because of the amount of detail and sensory bits that their brains are recording, time seems endless.

Then there's the way that fantasy blends through the boundaries of reality. The networks that are supposed to enforce rationality and filter out the impossible are still being built in the children’s minds. The default mode network, the part of the brain responsible for self-reflection and internal narration, still hasn’t developed its adult-like state. So there being, toys become friends, shadows become animals, and the impossibly difficult doesn't yet require explanation. A child’s mind allows imagined things to feel authentic.

This holds true for emotions as well. The prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for controlling emotions and reason, won't completely activate for years, but the amygdala matures early, illuminating even little encounters with strong emotional force. A child's happiness is boundless, their fears are overwhelming, and their misery is complete. Because their nature hasn't yet taught them how to turn down the volume, they experience every emotion at maximum intensity.

Additionally, children enter a state of presence during play that adults struggle to recapture. The default mode network just doesn't talk as loudly, and their minds produce considerably fewer internal disruptions. They become deeply focused almost immediately if they don't have a steady stream of self-analysis, self-consciousness, planning, and reduced stress in their lives. Give a child a toy that they can reassemble or sensory stimulation like a patch of dirt to mess with, and they disappear into it. Taken by a kind of natural flow state that adults often only visit accidentally.

Perhaps the biggest difference, though, is how unfamiliar the world is to children. Their brains are in the middle of a storm of ‘neuroplasticity’--science’s term for the young brain’s malleability. Pathways are formed, cut, and reshaped at an incredible rate. The dopamine system receives information about every bug, puddle, and strange sound as if they were rewarding discoveries. Because young brains consider nearly everything worthwhile, the world’s unusualness is present everywhere.

We give up part of this richness in favor of efficiency as adults. Our brains make life easier by streamlining, filtering, predicting, refining, and readjusting. However, this comes at the cost of the whimsy we felt as children. Our neural architecture has simply become quieter, more economical, and less startled by the ordinary. Understanding this phenomenon doesn’t just explain what we lose as we grow up; it also reveals how simple and wondrous it once was to exist in the world for the very first time.