This study examined differences in visual attention as a function of label learning from 6 to 9 months of age. Before and after 3 months of parent-directed storybook training with computer-generated novel objects, event-related potentials and visual fixations were recorded while infants viewed trained and untrained images (n = 23). Relative to a…

Failure to develop normal language comprehension is an early warning sign of autism, but the neural mechanisms underlying this signature deficit are unknown. This is because of an almost complete absence of functional studies of the autistic brain during early development. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we previously observed a trend…

Background: Physical activity and structural differences in the hippocampus have been linked to educational outcome. We investigated whether a curriculum-based physical activity intervention correlates positively with children's academic achievement, psychological well-being, health-related quality of life (HRQoL), fitness, and structural…

Young children born very prematurely show elevated thresholds for global motion and global form [Atkinson, J. & Braddick, O. (2007). "Visual and visuocognitive development in children born very prematurely." "Progress in Brain Research, 164." 123-149; MacKay, T. L., Jakobson, L. S., Ellemberg, D., Lewis, T. L., Maurer, D., & Casiro, O. (2005).…

Adult learning and memory functions are strongly dependent on neonatal experiences. We recently showed that neonatal odor-shock learning attenuates later life odor fear conditioning and amygdala activity. In the present work we investigated whether changes observed in adults can also be observed in other structures normally involved, namely…

Background: In this study we used event-related potentials (ERPs) and source localization analyses to track the time course of neural activity underlying response monitoring in children diagnosed with an anxiety disorder compared to age-matched low-risk normal controls. Methods: High-density ERPs were examined following errors on a flanker task…

Background: The aim of this study was to investigate attention orienting triggered by another's gaze direction in autism. Method: Twelve high-functioning children with autism and gender- and age-matched normal control children were studied using two tasks. In the first task, children were asked to detect laterally presented target stimuli preceded…

Introduction: In this review article we outline the thinking and evidence behind our hypothesis that the problems suffered by dyslexic people may be attributable to cerebellar deficit. Method: Firstly, we provide an overview of recent evidence that proposes a central role for the cerebellum in cognitive skills, in particular those scaffolded by…