The Central Nervous System
Did you ever wonder how you learn? I use to think my brain did all the work. After all brains are built for learning. Now I know better. Brains CANNOT learn anything without input from our bodies.
All information you have ever learned, or ever will learn came into your brain from your senses. You couldn’t possibly imagine what a day at the beach is like if your nose had never taught your brain what sea air smelled like, your eyes had never taught your brain what it looks like when the waves crash onto the shore, your ears had never heard the whistle of the wind on the shore, your skin had never felt the cold sea breeze and your mouth (unfortunately) had never tasted the salty sand. Brains can only learn when our bodies are inputting information.
The role of the Central Nervous System (CNS) is to process all this information it is receiving constantly from a multitude of sources and making sense of it all. This also includes processing information from our internal sources too. Are we hungry? Tired? Do we need the toilet? etc It is how we perceive the world and our reactions to it. If there is an immaturity in the CNS we are going to struggle to process our world. Deficiencies in any area(s) of the sensory system is going to make the CNS have to work a lot harder. Sensory systems don’t work in isolation, so when one is not fully mature it can have a knock-on effect on all the others. It can affect how we see the world and influence the learner mentally, emotionally, physically and socially.
Think of the central nervous system as the main hub for processing all our sensory input. It can only process what goes in, if information is not entering it properly we will see this in behaviour, learning, balance, hand eye coordination etc. Some of our senses include vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell; as well as some senses you may not have heard of, vestibular, proprioceptive, interoceptive. We will go into each sense in detail in future blog posts.
The good news is, that even with some sensory difficulties, the CNS can be ‘rewired’ to work more collaboratively, which can help reduce any learning and behavioural challenges. The next time you are out and about see if you can take the time to notice and think about everything that you can see, hear, taste, touch and smell in that moment. Your CNS works so hard!