Chapter 4
Things to think about before reading this Chapter
- According to Johnson, plasticity is an inherent property of developmental processes. What does this mean and what empirical evidence does he describe in this chapter that illustrates this claim?
- According to current research, what are some activity-dependent processes that appear to differentiate cortical areas in postnatal development?
- What special challenges are faced by neuroscientists seeking to utilize advanced methods of brain imaging with infants and young children?
- What does the term “social brain” mean and what role does it play in understanding postnatal development?
- What evidence supports the conclusion that the development of most memory tasks is likely engage multiple memory systems?
- What importance will new methods in epigenetics have for our understanding of human brain development?
Chapter Outline
DEVELOPMENTAL NEUROSCIENCE, PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY, AND GENETICS
Introduction
Some Basics of Brain Structure
Basic Assumptions about Brain Development and Behavioral Change
Methods for Studying Functional Brain Development
Building a Brain
Prenatal Brain Development
Postnatal Brain Development
Differentiation of the Cerebral Cortex
Postnatal Development and Behavioral Change
Vision
Attention and Visually Guided Action
The Development of the Social Brain
Memory
Language Acquisition and Speech Recognition
Frontal Cortex Development, Object Permanence, and Planning
Conclusions
Suggested Readings
Bachevalier, J. (2008) Nonhuman primate models of memory development. In C. A. Nelson & M. Luciana (Eds.), The handbook of developmental cognitive neuroscience (2nd ed., pp. 499–508). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Gottlieb, G. (2007). Probabilistic epigenisis. Developmental Science, 10, 1–11.
Herbert, M. R., Ziegler, D. A., Makris, N. B., Dakardjiev, A., Hodgson, J., Adrien, K. T., et al. (2003). Larger brain and white matter volumes in children with developmental language disorder. Developmental Science, 6(4), F11–F22.
Johnson, M. H. (2001). Functional brain development in humans. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2, 475–483.
Johnson, M. H., Grossmann, T., and Cohen-Kadosh, K. (2009). Mapping functional brain development: Building a social brain through interactive specialization. Developmental Psychology, 45, 151–159.
Kingsbury, M. A., & Finlay, B. L. (2001). The cortex in multidimensional space: Where do cortical areas come from? Developmental Science, 4, 125–142.
Klingberg, T. (2006) Development of a superior frontal–intraparietal network for visuo-spatial working memory. Neuropsychologia, 44(11), 2171–2177.
Kuhl, P. K. (2007). Is speech learning gated by the social brain? Developmental Science, 10, 110–120.
Marcus, G. F., & Fisher, S. E. (2003). FOXP2 in focus: What can genes tell us about speech and language? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(6), 257–262.
Neville, H., Bavelier, D., Corina, D., Rauschecker, J. P., Karni, A., Lalwani, A., et al. (1998). Cerebral organization for language in deaf and hearing subjects: Biological constraints and effects of experience. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95, 922–929.
Olson, E. A. & Luciana, M. (2008). The development of prefrontal cortex functions in adolescence. In C. A. Nelson & M. Luciana (Eds.), Handbook of developmental cognitive neuroscience (2nd ed., pp. 575–590). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Richards, J. E. (2008). Attention in young infants: A developmental psychophysiological perspective. In C. A. Nelson & M. Luciana (Eds.), The handbook of developmental cognitive neuroscience (2nd ed., pp. 479–498). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Glossary
Epigenome: A network of chemical compounds surrounding DNA that modify the genome without altering the DNA sequences and have a role in determining which genes are active in a particular cell.
Event-related potentials (ERPs): Method of studying neural activity in the brain in which the electrical activation is induced by the presentation of a stimulus and recorded by electrodes that rest on the scalp surface.
Excitatory: Response to a synaptic input which increases the probability that a cell will fire an action potential.
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI): Method of studying the relationship of brain activity and behavior or mental processes by the non-invasive measurement of cerebral blood oxygen using high spatial resolution and temporal resolution on the order of seconds.
Gene Expression: The activation of a gene or genes to produce proteins.
Genotype: the total of all genes in an individual’s DNA.
Inhibitory: Response to a synaptic input which decreases the probability that a cell will fire an action potential.
Innate: Historically, the description of preexisting as opposed to “experiential” contributions to behavior; more recent conceptualizations of innateness hold only to the notion that some brain and cognitive systems are more impervious to experience during development than others.
Myelinization: Process of brain development involving the lipid coating of neural fibers, and resulting in changes in the speed and fidelity of neural conduction.
Neurotransmitters: Biochemical substance which is released by the presynaptic neuron at synapses that transmits information to another neuron.
Phenotype: The end product of gene expression.
Plasticity: The potential for relative systematic change in human development across the life span and the multiple levels of organization comprising the ecology of human development (see Ch. 1). In the context of neurological development, the state of not yet having achieved specialization at some level that is an inherent property of brain growth and development, rather than simply the recovery of function after early brain damage (see Ch. 4).
Pleiotropic: Refers to the same gene playing multiple different roles at different points in development or in different tissues.
Saccades: Measureable eye movements related to planning and attention (anticipatory saccades) or elicited by visual targets (reactive saccades).
Subcortical: Brain regions such as the basal nuclei, cerebellum, hippocampus, and thalamus that lay under the cerebral cortex.