The Brain Of Gifted Children

The brain of gifted or highly capable children has its advantages, but also its limitations. They process information very quickly, have a high analytical capacity and a sophisticated critical sense. However, they do not always achieve their full potential or develop a strong mind capable of skillfully handling their abilities, as well as their emotional universes.

What at first may be little more than a blessing, for many people it is not so much. Every gifted child or with high capacities will have the difficulties typical of any boy or girl of his age, added of course, to those derived from his high IQ.

Thus, and although the remarkable advantages of a brain endowed with extraordinary capacities are very often spoken of, other factors that also characterize this population sector are not always taken into account. We talk about anxiety, low self-esteem, the feeling of isolation, of disconnection in the face of an environment that is not very adjusted to their needs … All of them problems that begin to be more evident after the age of eleven.

From the state associations of giftedness and high capacities they have it clear. It is not enough to provide the means for identification to be carried out at an early age (it is estimated that the ideal would be between 3 and 5 years). We also need to understand what the brain of gifted children is like. It is a priority to understand how it develops and which neuronal milestones must be accompanied by the most appropriate reinforcements, the most suitable supports.

The brain of gifted or highly capable children

Neuroscientists have always had a great interest in understanding the brains of gifted children. What differentiates them from children with average or normal intelligence? What exceptional neural resources do they present to show so much intellectual talent? Many of these questions are being answered thanks to new advances in contrast techniques, such as, for example, MRIs.

These are part of the discoveries that we have at the moment and that we can consult in specialized spaces, such as The British Psychological Society.

Your cerebral cortex develops more slowly

This data is striking. Something that neuroscience has made clear and that could already be seen with Albert Einstein is that people with a high IQ do not have a bigger brain. Moreover, it has been seen that children with high abilities tend to have a thinner cerebral cortex. However, the development of this layer thickens and thickens slowly, but gradually, until adolescence.

In children with “normal” IQs, the opposite is true. In early childhood they have a thicker cortex. By the age of 12 or 13, this area tends to shrink and reduce its size. What does this mean? Basically, the brain of a child with high capacities becomes more sophisticated and specialized over time. His moment of greatest potential is adolescence.

Brain regions are specialized

Children with high capacities also have a greater volume of gray matter in certain brain regions. Remember that gray matter has to do with cognition, intelligence and our ability to process information. This basically means that gifted students have more skills to handle data, analyze it and draw conclusions.

In the brain, there are 28 regions related to our ability to reason, act, focus attention, and react to external sensory stimuli. Children with high capacities present a greater specialization in each of these areas.

Greater neural connection

While gray matter is what contains and handles information, matter or white matter is what moves it, who facilitates the connection between neurons. We can already guess, therefore, that in the brain of gifted children this is undoubtedly one of its most notable characteristics. Its  neural efficiency is enormous. 

They have, so to speak, many more neural roads and highways to drive data, information, concepts. In addition, they are intercommunicating routes, a vast, sophisticated and hyper-connected network where everything works very very fast. Now, this feature also has its downsides.

Sometimes jams can arise. In other words, the child with high capacities may feel collapsed in the face of so much processed information, in the face of so many relationships that he carries out between some ideas and others. Hence, sometimes it is blocked by so many ideas, by so many hypotheses and inferences. You have so much mental and neural activity that it can often take much longer to deliver an exam and even answer a seemingly simple question.

Brain plasticity, its greatest advantage

Much of the neuroscientific work highlights the great plasticity that the brain of children with high capacities presents. As we have pointed out at the beginning, your cerebral cortex grows more slowly, specializes and is constantly changing. New connections, new roads are gradually being created to facilitate learning.

When a child pays attention to a new experience, his brain changes, it specializes, new pathways are built, neural pathways to communicate areas, regions, structures. The plasticity of gifted children is so wonderful that many neurologists report that they are ever-growing minds. Minds hungry and eager for interaction that we do not always know how to attend as they deserve.

To conclude, something that deserves to be taken into account about what has been analyzed is the way in which the brain of gifted children matures. It is gradual but sophisticated and peaks in adolescence. While children with a normal IQ have it over the age of 5 or 6, it is adolescents with high abilities who demand greater demands at this age.

Above all, they need a favorable environment that allows them to further enhance their abilities, boost their brain plasticity. If what surrounds that 10 or 11 year old child is a structured environment and little adjusted to his potential, the most common is that he tends to ostracism and frustration. Let us therefore be more sensitive to these minds so awake, but at the same time fragile in many respects.