Are you the only child in the family? Learn how this affected the development of your brain

In a study in China, it was shown that children who grow up without siblings may have a different brain structure. Scientists have found that the only child in the family grows more creative, but less sociable.

Does the presence of brothers and sisters affect the development of the brain?

Previous studies have focused on differences in behavior, cognitive functions and character traits of single children and those who have brothers or sisters. In the end, no one is surprised that children who did not have any brothers or sisters do not have to share their parents' attention with others, so the likelihood that they will be praised increases significantly. But they do not get the early experience of the competition and do not develop the habit of sharing anything. A new study, conducted at the Southwestern University in Chongqing, set a goal to find out whether there is a difference in behavior between the neuronal base. The study also determined whether a particular family environment and atmosphere had an impact on the structural development of the child's brain.

What is this research?

In China, there was a policy of one child from 1979 to 2015. It was an attempt to control the population, which led to a significant increase in the number of single children in the family. Researchers studied 250 students from the university (a fairly small sample), of which about half were single children. The scientists performed brain scans, simultaneously conducted personal, creative and intellectual tests using proven methods.

Results of the study

Confirming previous results, the tests revealed that the only children showed much better results in creativity, but showed much worse results for pleasant character traits. The scan showed that those parts of the brain that are associated with the development of the scores tested actually had a different structure. The only children who showed the best results in creativity, had large volumes of gray matter in the parietal lobe - a part of the brain associated with mental flexibility and imagination. The results of the brain scan of those students who did not show the best results for pleasant character traits showed that they had smaller amounts of gray matter in the medial prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain that is known to be involved in the formation of thinking about oneself and in relation to others.