Full Episode
Not available in all states. Hey, it's Latif here with a quick note. Today, we have the second installment in the series where we just sort of let ourselves fall into a conversation between our own senior correspondent, Molly Webster, and a scientist who's working on the front edge of something, if not exactly news, something deeply and delightfully new. So here we go. Wait, you're listening?
Okay. All right.
You're listening to Radiolab from WNYC.
I don't know about you, but I found being a teenager and, you know, going into puberty very difficult. You know, I was bullied by the mean girls, the popular girls at school and had to eat lunch by myself. And I remember having a tearful conversation with my mother and she was like, don't worry. It'll pass. You think that this is the whole world right now.
But in a few years, you'll be off in the bigger world and you'll see that there are a lot more people and you'll fit in better and it'll be fine.
I'm Molly Webster. This is Radiolab. And that was Ghul Dolan, a neuroscientist and former teen. But unlike maybe the rest of us former teens, Ghul's very familiar teenage struggle would end up at the center of her scientific work and lead to new ways of seeing the moments in our lives when our most basic habits and behaviors emerge. And then get locked in.
And it all starts with something called critical periods. Okay. So for like us, you know, yokels over here, like what is a critical learning period?
Yeah. So critical periods are windows of time when the brain is especially sensitive to its environment and it can learn really well and really strong from that environment. Probably the best way to understand that is to think about the first critical period that was described. I think a lot of people have heard of it. It's imprinting behavior in geese. So this is so cute.
We did an episode on it at one point. Yeah.
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