The ways in which age of acquisition (AoA) may affect (morpho)syntax in second language acquisition (SLA) are discussed. We suggest that event-related brain potentials (ERPs) provide an appropriate online measure to test some such effects. ERP findings of the past decade are reviewed with a focus on recent and ongoing research. It is concluded…

Persons with traumatic brain injury (TBI) often have difficulty recognizing emotion in others. This is likely due to difficulties in interpreting non-verbal cues of affect. Although deficits in interpreting facial cues of affect are being widely explored, interpretation of vocal cues of affect has received much less attention. Accurate…

The objective of this study was to examine response inhibition- and feedback-related neural activity in adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) using event-related functional MRI. Sixteen male adults with ADHD and 13 healthy/normal controls participated in this study and performed a modified Go/NoGo task. Behaviourally,…

This article explores the ways in which knowledge from the cognitive neurosciences, linguistics, and education interact to deepen our understanding of reading's complexity and to inform reading intervention. We first describe how research on brain abnormalities and naming speed processes has shaped both our conceptualization of reading…

The inherent imprecision of behavioral phenotyping is the single most important factor contributing to the failure to discover the biological factors that are involved in psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders (e.g., Bearden & Freimer, 2006). In this review article we argue that in addition to an appreciation of the inherent complexity at…

Young and nondemented older adults were tested on a continuous recognition memory task requiring visual pattern separation. During the task, some objects were repeated across trials and some objects, referred to as lures, were presented that were similar to previously presented objects. The lures resulted in increased interference and an increased…

Tal Ben-Shahar was once a successful psychology professor at Harvard University. His classes on positive psychology attracted audiences of more than 850 students, making it the most popular course on the campus. But the best-selling author of "Heaven Can Wait" and "Happier" left America in 2006 to return to his native Israel…

This article provides a terminological framework to show the relationships among different types of visual deficits. It distinguishes between visual functions, which describe how the eye and the lower visual system function, and functional vision, which describes how a person functions. When visual functions are disturbed, the term "visual…

The use of functional neuroimaging on patients with pediatric bipolar disorder finds that there is increased amygdala activation on this group when they are tasked to judge whether emotion in faces showing the same emotion were older or younger than 35 years. The right prefrontal systems also seem less engaged in patients with this disorder.

Linguistic lateralization in 10 adolescents with Down syndrome (average age: 15.7 years), 15 adolescents with intellectual disabilities of unknown etiology (average age: 17.8 years), 2 groups of children without disabilities (11 children, average age: 4.7 years; 10 children, average age: 8.5 years), and 14 adolescents without disabilities (average…

From the first moments of life, infants begin the exciting journey to gain control of their bodies. These beginning movements are an essential way of playing and learning for infants. During their first year, infants learn more motor skills than at any other time in their lives. Brain research has revealed that the motor area of an infant's brain…

Whisker deflection is an effective conditioned stimulus (CS) for trace eyeblink conditioning that has been shown to induce a learning-specific expansion of whisker-related cortical barrels, suggesting that memory storage for an aspect of the trace association resides in barrel cortex. To examine the role of the barrel cortex in acquisition and…

Different functions have been suggested for the hippocampus and its subdivisions along both transversal and longitudinal axes. Expression of immediate-early genes (IEGs) has been used to map specific functions onto neuronal activity in different areas of the brain including the hippocampus (IEG imaging). Here we review IEG studies on hippocampal…

On March 15, 2007, Santa Barbara residents were shocked when a baby-faced 15-year-old high school student was stabbed to death in the heart of the city's fashionable State Street shopping district. His assailant, just 14, was a member of a rival street gang and a student at the local junior high. "It was a wakeup call for the entire…

Improving teacher retention and resiliency are key educational problems. In this article, we share findings from case studies of six educators who, for over 200 combined years, worked in urban, high-poverty schools and highlight what teachers need to remain in such contexts. We argue that developing "professional resilience" is a process…