This criticism seems to take studies in which researchers found that watching a lot of TV is bad to draw the conclusion that watching any TV ever is bad, and that all TV is equally bad, and none of it is ever good.

That's like concluding that if eating a lot of meat is bad, eating a small portion of cod is also bad.

It's simply not what was studied by the research, and is not necessarily true.

On top of that, the research most likely does not examine the options the parents had, or compare like-for-like home where the only difference was in whether TV was watched or not. Maybe in the homes where children don't watch any TV, parents have a lot of time and energy available to play with kids. Maybe they have older siblings, or for all we know, nannies. Maybe those are homes where people are wealthier, or come from a different cultural background. Maybe there just weren't a lot of homes where no TV is watched, and the families that go that way are exceptionally smart, deteremined and independent minded. Unless you factor in those kinds of things, such studies are of very limited use.

My nieces and nephews watched these DVDs when they were small, and they're growing up fine. My sisters used them to sooth the baby when they were upset, or settle them down when they couldn't sleep, or keep them entertained for a short time while mom had to do some chores. If the DVD wasn't available, it's not likely the babies would have been having wonderful learning experiences in those moments instead.

Sure, if you never played with your kids but sat them in front of the TV all day, it's probably not going to be good for them. But you knew what anyway right? Parents need to take responsibility for how they use these things, not blame Disney for making them.

There's nothing surprising about any of this.

It was known to neuropsychologists that things like baby-einstein and/or teletubies would not only be ineffective, but were likely to have weird long-term effects on the development of a human mind.

Specifically, it's been known since the early 70's, from research done at the Montreal Neurological Institute, the world's leading institute for the study of neuropsychology, that the cutoff was around the age of 3.5

The reason is because of a phenomena called imprinting, which is how mesocorticle neurons learn.

There are three basic classes, or types, of neurons in a human brain: Paleocortex, Mesocortex, and Neocortex, and they correspond to stages of evolution.

Paleocortex is the spinal cord and the medula oblongota, and it controls coordinated movement of muscles plus maintains synchronization of heart beat and breathing. It's basically what you find in worms, and it's very ancient.

It's also hard-wired by genetics, and can only change its "behavior" by genetic mutation, which means it was very, very slow to change the way it would control the parts of the body that it was in synchronizing.

The second is mesocortical neurons. There are many kinds of mesocorticle neurons, just like there are many kinds of bushes and shrubs, but they have something in common: They learn by imprinting.

Imprinting is that phenomena where a chick hatches out of an egg, sees a clock, and imprints the notion that that is its mother.

Behaviors learned by imprinting are not inherited per se, but once set, they're as hard-wired as if they were genetic. Basically, what happens is that the organism is born with a basic instruction, which is, "Identify your mother and follow her", and so the chick's head pops out of the shell, looks around, sees the clock, goes, "mommy", and the mesocorticle neurons gel into an imprint.

If you're curious to know how it works, what happens is that every neuron of the mesocorticle type sends out as many synaptic connections to every other mesocorticle neuron that it can, such that anything's possible (can you say "terrible twos"), and then it starts dropping links that don't work, leaving behind circuits that are supposed to make sense for surviving in the environment in which the child finds himself.

The reason imprinting is so permanent once imprinting happens is *because* it's based on *dropping* links, and you can only drop so many. In order to change an imprint you'd have to grow new synaptic connections between the mesocorticle neurons and drop the ones you don't want, but that's not how primitive mesocorticle neurons work... that how neocorticle neurons work.

It seems primitive now, but 500 million years ago it was great breakthrough, because it allowed for more adaptability to the environment.

A dinosaur would hatch with the basic command to figure out what was food where it was living, and it would peck around and try things out until it imprinted what was edible in the local district, and then once imprinted it could work very fast going peck peck peck to pick out just the seeds that were edible from all the gravel around those seeds that looked nearly identical. Ever wondered how birds can pick a sunflower seed off a gravel road from 30 meters away? It's because they imprinted it exactly what stone and what's a seed.

The whole limbic system of the middle part of the human brain consists of mesocorticle neurons, and the imprinting period takes place from the age of 17 months to 3.5 years. The limbic system controls basic core emotions and personality, which is why you'll notice that kids don't really have a personality until they're about 3.5 to 4 years old.

In this image the limbic system is the part that's yellow.

http://www.biotele.com/memory_files/_44389464_limbic_system203.jpg

Among other things, whether or not a person is going to be a psychopath is set by imprinting gone awry, such that, in fact, with EEG's, it's possible to tell by the age of four whether or not a kid is going to grow up to be a psychopath... a psychopath's emotional-personality circuits in the personality layers of the mesocorticle limbic system didn't imprint right.

On top is the white wrinkly stuff, the neocortex, and it can re-learn at any time, but it can't start doing its thing until there's a set foundation of imprinted mesocorticle neurons to build upon as its foundationso.

Basically, the imprinted mesocorticle neurons set the personality and how all base emotions will react on an emotional level to phenomena, and say to the neocortex, "okay, here's your personality... now what are you going to do with it?"

So... two things have been known since the early 70's: 1) You're not going to teach any kid anything about general relativity or quantum physics before their limbic system has finished imprinting, don't even bother... let them *play*... that's how they imprint what works on this level of reality and what does not, and 2) gazing at flat screen surfaces are fascinating to kids that age just like gazing at a clock is fascinating to a chick fresh out of the shell, but they'll imprint some very wrong things about how reality works.

Kid's shouldn't start watching TV - even teletubies - until they're at least 3.5 years old, or... well... nobody was really quite sure... but neuropsychologists knew *something* would gum up.

All the neuropsychologists who knew about human brain development and the imprinting on the limbic system knew it had to be a bad idea to let toddlers glass out on TV and computer brain-trainers, and they were *saying* that to anyone who would listen, but *because* they couldn't say exactly *what* would go *wrong*, those who wanted to manufacture and sell teletubies TV and baby-einstein software said, "Until you can explain or prove to me what will happen that's so wrong about it, there's no reason for me to not make some money at it insolong as parents are willing to spend money on the dream of an Einstein child, nor for them to have the handiness of TV as a babysitter."

And so... I'm sorry, but the fact is... neuropsychologists have been sitting around for the last two decade or so, waiting to see what was going to happen. They didn't know *what* the effects would be (which is why they couldn't stop teletubies and baby-einstein from being used to turn toddlers into scientific experiments) but they were willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that something would not imprint right, and the MBAs wouldn't listen... and so, inevitably, enough kids have grown up to be old enough to study to see what happened.

That's grim, isn't it? We have rules against using humans in scientific experiments that way, and the neuropsychologists *did* try to tell everyone that that's what was happening, but the MBAs insisted on doing it anyway.

You wanna know what mixed feelings are? I had a business partner 15 years ago who had three daughters, and he and his wife were babysitting them with teletubies and were brain-training them with computers as toddlers, and I kept telling him over and over that it was a bad idea, but he wouldn't stop, plus the mother thought they were being progressive.

Then about ten years ago he split off to start his own company, and he chose to accelerate things by poaching my clients and best staff. I survived, but man, he made business really tough there for awhile.

Now his daughters are in their middle teens, and they are nothing like the champion equestrian debutantes he was hoping for, and sometimes I'm tempted to call him up and give him the gears about it, but before you freak at me for even having such a thought, relax.. I won't... that's pushing a mostly just-irksome grudge (the ol', "I trusted him and I thought we were friends," thing) *way* beyond any bounds of decency...

It's just that... I think the point I'm trying to make is... even when I see it happen to the kids of someone who chose to become a hostile competitor, and even though I did everything to warn him, including try to show him chapters from my neuropsych texts, it still hurts to see those girls zoning through life the way they are.

I mean... they're not *retarded* or dysfunctional per se... but there are some things that they just don't *get*, and most likely never will!

It wasn't their fault!

In any case... after the age of 3.5... after the limbic system has finished imprinting such that a personality and character have set, it's okay to let kids watch TV and play computer games all they want... up until about the age of 12, where TV (but not computer games) will start slowing them down... albeit not irreversibly, and not for the same reasons as the problem of exposing toddlers to TV and baby-einstein games...

... but that's a different topic.