-Social connection is kind of a basic human need, the same way as thirst and hunger are human needs.

...talking to Isaiah, not me... -Dani Dumitriu is a neuroscientist and pediatrician at Columbia University, where she studies social connection in infants.

-Our hypothesis for all the work in my lab is that human connection is something that gets hardwired into the brain very, very early in life.

Babies are born wired to connect.

In my lab, we think zero to 3 months of life are really the critical period for that social connection to happen.

And if it doesn't happen within that time span, then children will not be able to, as adolescents and into adulthood, have normal social functioning.

-From birth, our biology compels us to connect, fueled by oxytocin, a powerful hormone that helps us form our earliest bonds.

-Oxytocin is this peptide hormone.

It's released during childbirth.

It's released during nursing.

And it seems designed to really build that connection.

-One way oxytocin is released is by simple touch.

-We come pre-wired to depend on touch as a very primitive primordial channel for driving connection.

There are sensors in the skin, the hairy parts of the skin, like on your forearms or on the back of your head, that project to parts of the brain that's kind of giving you this oxytocin rush.

♪♪ -Children can overcome early lack of social connection only if they start getting it within that critical period of development, so generally thought of the zero to 3 years.

-How exactly are children able to overcome the lack of social connection?

The brain can be rewired during development because of plasticity, the unique ability of the brain to change.

-The essence of the brain is plasticity.

That is how the brain works.

It's a learning machine.

-The first couple years of life is the time that there's the highest plasticity in the brain.

Over the course of the first two years, the brain actually doubles in size.

So during the first couple years of life, there's so many connections that are forming, and that plasticity means that if a child falls behind in those first few years, it is very, very easy to get them back on course with proper intervention.