Cognitive Neuroscience Investigation of Typical and Atypical Development
Bradley Schlaggar
Washington University at Saint Louis, USA
According to Johnson and Pennington, "One of the strong claims of developmental cognitive neuroscience is that a comprehensive
understanding of mature cognition cannot be attained without understanding both the normal and abnormal development of the human brain.
In other words, we cannot understand how the mature system works until we understand how it is constructed in development,
as we cannot fully understand that process of normal construction without understanding how development may go awry."
The curriculum below will present examples of developmental cognitive neuroscience investigations into typical and atypical cognitive development.
Day 1 – Introduction to functional MRI and to issues in experimental design.
• Background Readings:
Day 2 – Developmental plasticity: lessons from perinatal stroke.
• Background Readings:
Day 3 – Typical and Atypical reading development.
• Background Reading:
Day 4 – The development of task level control networks in Tourette Syndrome.
• Background Reading:
Raichle, M.E., et al (2001) A default mode of brain function. PNAS. 98:676-682.
Day 5 – The development of the default mode network.
• Background Reading:
Raichle, M.E., et al (2001) A default mode of brain function. PNAS. 98:676-682.
Fox, M.D., Raichle, M.E. (2007) Spontaneous Fluctuations in brain activity observed with functional magnetic resonance imaging. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. 8:700-711. Raichle, M.E., et al (2001) A default mode of brain function. PNAS. 98:676-682.
Assignments
Students who take the course for credit will be asked to write a brief (5-7 page) paper that critically reviews one or more of the articles read in class, or to comment on other work that is related to the issues discussed in the class.
Afternoon section meetings
Afternoon sessions will be used to generate a proposal for a developmental cognitive neuroscience experiment using fMRI. Students will work in small groups and will present their proposals orally for peer review.
Bradley L Schlaggar
Bradley L Schlaggar MD PhD is the A. Ernest and Jane G. Stein Professor of Developmental Neurology and is an Associate Professor of Neurology, Radiology, Anatomy & Neurobiology, & Pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri, USA. He is a pediatric neurologist and developmental cognitive neuroscientist. He is the Director of the Pediatric Neurology Residency Training Program at St. Louis Children's Hospital.