Human Brain Development: Cognition and Brain Development (PDF)

Research in brain cognition and development has expanded rapidly over the last ten years. Our scientific understanding of the developmental stages of infancy, childhood, and adolescence has reached a new level of sophistication, thanks to extensive studies on cognitive processes such as attention, inhibition, executive control, working memory, language, spatial cognition, lexical access, and emotional processing. In this book, an elite group of international contributors presents the latest advances in the science of cognitive development. The authors work at some of the world's most prestigious labs across North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia and their diverse linguistic backgrounds permit especially interesting work on language and cognition. They explore such issues as: the role of dopamine in ADHD; the development of self-consciousness and ethics; the use of functional MRI in epilepsy patients; the crucial role of culture in the development of language New, converging methodologies derived from behavioral experimentation, electrophysiology, eye tracking, genetics, and neuroimaging studies characterize this research. Together, the chapters demonstrate a truly international and holistic approach to understanding human cognition and brain development.