absorbing information 201x201They can’t spell neuroscience, yet your kindergartner helps you work your new phone and your toddler translates conversation for his French grandmother — how? Carnegie Mellon University’s Sandra Kuhlman and her colleagues are on the way to finding out.

Neuroscientists have long been striving to understand how the brain’s microcircuitry makes learning easier for the young. Kuhlman and researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of California, Irvine have uncovered surprising behavior by key brain cells.