Across a range of mammalian species, early developmental variations in fear-related behaviors constrain patterns of anxious behavior throughout life. Individual differences in anxiety among rodents and non-human primates have been shown to reflect early-life influences of genes and the environment on brain circuitry. However, in humans, the manner…

Our understanding of the causes of a developmental disorder like dyslexia has received recent input from both neuroscience and genetics. The discovery of 4 candidate genes for dyslexia and the identification of neuronal networks engaged when children read and spell are the basis for introducing this knowledge into education. However, the input…

Three local colleges in the Lehigh Valley collaborate on a service-learning project called Brain Awareness Day to enhance neuroscience literacy among the public regarding the functions of the brain and benefits of brain research. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)

We examined autonomic physiological responses induced by six different cognitive ability tasks, varying in complexity, that were selected on the basis of on Guilford's Structure of Intellect model. In a group of 52 participants, task performance was measured together with nine different autonomic response measures and respiration rate. Weighted…

The medial temporal lobe memory system matures relatively early and supports rudimentary declarative memory in young infants. There is considerable development, however, in the memory processes that underlie declarative memory performance during infancy. Here we consider age-related changes in encoding, retention, and retrieval in the context of…

The human brain appears to have several "regions" that are structured to do different kinds of spatial thinking, according to a large and rapidly growing body of research in a number of disciplines. Building on a previous review of research with older children and adults, this article summarizes the research on spatial thinking by young children.…

Some patients considered for left temporal lobectomy for epilepsy present with normal verbal learning and no MRI evidence of hippocampal pathology. In order to preserve learning function, the surgical approach in these cases often aims at sparing the hippocampus. Parahippocampal structures, including the left perirhinal region, however, also…

Deviances in early event-related potential (ERP) components reflecting auditory and phonological processing are well-documented in children at familial risk for dyslexia. However, little is known about brain responses which index processing in other linguistic domains such as lexicon, semantics and syntax in this group. The present study…

When neural events are analyzed as stimuli and responses, functional relations among them and among overt stimuli and responses can be unveiled. The integration of neuroscience and the experimental analysis of behavior is beginning to provide empirical evidence of involvement of neural events in the three-term contingency relating discriminative…

Developmental dyslexia is defined as a disorder of learning to read. It is thus critical to examine the neural processes that impair learning to read during the early phase of reading acquisition, before compensatory mechanisms are adapted by older readers with dyslexia. Using electroencephalography-based event-related imaging, we investigated how…

Medications are the primary treatment for epilepsy, yet many teens and their families have problems managing seizure medicines. Fear of side effects, difficulties remembering to take medicines and figuring out how to take them are common challenges. Unfortunately, not taking medicine as prescribed can lead to breakthrough seizures, which in turn…

Fragile X and Turner syndromes are two X-chromosome-related disorders associated with executive function and visual spatial deficits. In the present study, we used ocular motor paradigms to examine evidence that disruption to different neurological pathways underlies these deficits. We tested 17 females with fragile X, 19 females with Turner…

This study looks at whether conventional and anomalous metaphors are processed in different locations in the brain while being read when compared with a literal condition in Mandarin Chinese. We find that conventional metaphors differ from the literal condition with a slight amount of increased activation in the right inferior temporal gyrus. In…

We investigated processing of metaphoric sentences using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Seventeen healthy subjects (6 female, 11 male) read 60 novel short German sentence pairs with either metaphoric or literal meaning and performed two different tasks: judging the metaphoric content and judging whether the sentence…

This book provides an introduction to the current scientific understanding of the human brain and its processes. Chapter 1, "At the Edge of a Major Transformation," is an introduction to the field. Chapter 2, "How Our Brain Organizes Itself on the Cellular and Systems Levels," covers what body/brain cellular systems do, how…