The purpose of this qualitative research assignment was to explore experiences with the early implementation stages of the Neurosequential Model in Education (NME) in an elementary classroom setting. Data gathered from four participant interviews, three elementary teachers and one educational assistant, revealed three categories surrounding the…

Neuroscientists have long believed that there are sensitive periods in development during which the effects of experience play a critical role. And developmental psychologists have argued for the importance of early experience in the first years of life as being critical for brain and behavioral development. Most of the neuroscience research…

Cognitive control, the ability to voluntarily guide our behavior, continues to improve throughout adolescence. Below we review the literature on age-related changes in brain function related to response inhibition and working memory, which support cognitive control. Findings from studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) indicate…

The integrated use of spatial and temporal information seems to support the separation of two sensory streams. The present study tested whether this facilitation depends on the encoding of sensory stimuli in externally anchored spatial coordinate systems. Fifty-nine children between 5 and 12 years as well as 12 young adults performed a crossmodal…

Many studies have shown that the visual cortex of blind humans is activated in non-visual tasks. However, the electrophysiological signals underlying this cross-modal plasticity are largely unknown. Here, we characterize the neuronal population activity in the visual and auditory cortex of congenitally blind humans and sighted controls in a…

This study investigated the ability of preterm infants to learn an object shape with one hand and discriminate a new shape in the opposite hand (without visual control). Twenty-four preterm infants between 33 and 34 + 6 gestational weeks received a tactile habituation task with either their right or left hand followed by a tactile discrimination…

Background: In recent decades, the assessment of neurological soft signs (NSS) in patients with psychosis has become a subject of special interest. The study of the progression of NSS during adolescence will provide valuable information about the role of NSS as endophenotypes or biomarkers and about brain development at a stage in which brain…

Aim: To assess the relation between cerebellar volume and spectroscopy at term equivalent age, and neurodevelopment at 24 months corrected age in preterm infants. Methods: Magnetic resonance imaging of the brain was performed around term equivalent age in 112 preterm infants (mean gestational age 28wks 3d [SD 1wk 5d]; birthweight 1129g [SD 324g]).…

Looking is a fundamental exploratory behavior by which infants acquire knowledge about the world. In theories of infant habituation, however, looking as an exploratory behavior has been deemphasized relative to the reliable nature with which looking indexes active cognitive processing. We present a new theory that connects looking to the dynamics…

Recent neuroimaging research has encouraged a fundamental shift in psychological thinking about cognitive development in adolescence. Challenging the existing view that early childhood was the most critical period for intellectually hard-wiring the brain, findings led researchers to speculate that early adolescence might be the more important…

The vitamin A derivative retinoic acid (RA) regulates the transcription of about a 6th of the human genome. Compelling evidence indicates a role of RA in cognitive activities, but its integration with the molecular mechanisms of higher brain functions is not known. Here we describe the properties of RA signaling in the mouse, which point to…

Despite the fact that hemispheric asymmetry of attention has been widely studied, a clear picture of this complex phenomenon is still lacking. The aim of the present study was to provide an efficient and reliable measurement of potential hemispheric asymmetries of three attentional networks, i.e. alerting, orienting and executive attention.…

Thinking about other people's thoughts recruits a specific group of brain regions, including the temporo-parietal junctions (TPJ), precuneus (PC), and medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). The same brain regions were recruited when children (N = 20, 5-11 years) and adults (N = 8) listened to descriptions of characters' mental states, compared to…

Behavioral activation that is associated with incentive-reward motivation increases in adolescence relative to childhood and adulthood. This quadratic developmental pattern is generally supported by behavioral and experimental neuroscience findings. It is suggested that a focus on changes in dopamine neurotransmission is informative in…

Connectionist theories of language propose that written language deficits arise as a result of damage to semantic and phonological systems that also support spoken language production and comprehension, a view referred to as the "primary systems" hypothesis. The objective of the current study was to evaluate the primary systems account in a mixed…