My colleague Professor Alison Gopnik discusses the Wilbrecht Lab’s work in the Wall Street Journal this week. Gopnik’s article covers two experiments from the Lab–our 2011 paper on juvenile mice and reversal learning, and our 2015 maternal separation and flexibility paper.
Young Mice, Like Children, Can Grow Up Too Fast
Is it good to grow up? We often act as if children should develop into adults as quickly as possible. More and more we urge our children to race to the next level, leap over the next hurdle, make it to the next grade as fast as they can. But new brain studies suggest that it may not be good to grow up so fast. The neuroscientist Linda Wilbrecht at my own school, the University of California, Berkeley, and her collaborators recently reported that early stress makes babies, at least baby mice, grow up too soon.
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