Developmental cognitive neuroscience

Last updated

Developmental cognitive neuroscience is an interdisciplinary scientific field devoted to understanding psychological processes and their neurological bases in the developing organism. It examines how the mind changes as children grow up, interrelations between that and how the brain is changing, and environmental and biological influences on the developing mind and brain.

Contents

Developmental cognitive neuroscience is at the boundaries of neuroscience (behavioral, systems, & cognitive neuroscience), psychology (developmental, cognitive, & biobehavioral/ physiological psychology), developmental science (which includes sociology, anthropology, & biology in addition to psychology & neuroscience), cognitive science (which includes computer science, philosophy, dynamical systems, & linguistics in addition to psychology), and even includes socio-emotional development and developmental aspects of social neuroscience and affective neuroscience.

The scientific interface between cognitive neuroscience and human development has evoked considerable interest in recent years, as technological advances make it possible to map in detail the changes in brain structure that take place during development. Developmental cognitive neuroscience overlaps somewhat with fields such as developmental psychology, developmental neuropsychology, developmental psychopathology, and developmental neuroscience, but is distinct from each of them as well. Developmental cognitive neuroscience is concerned with the brain bases of the phenomena that developmental psychologists study. Developmental neuropsychology and developmental psychopathology are both devoted primarily to studying patients, whereas developmental cognitive neuroscience is concerned with studying both typical and atypical development. Developmental neuroscience is devoted entirely to the study of developmental processes in the brain, and primarily during the prenatal period. Developmental cognitive neuroscience, on the other hand, is concerned with interrelations between psychological and biological development. Developmental cognitive neuroscientists study brain development and cognitive, social, and emotional development from the prenatal period through adulthood. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

More recently, developmental cognitive neuroscience is interested in the role of genes in development and cognition. [10] [11] [12] [13] Thus, developmental cognitive neuroscience may shed light on nature versus nurture debates as well as constructivism and neuroconstructivism theories. Developmental cognitive neuroscience research provides data that alternately blends together, clarifies, challenges, and causes revisions in developmental, cognitive, and neuroscientific theories. [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25]

Origins of the discipline

Developmental conference May 24 1989.jpg
Participants at The Development and Neural Bases of Higher Cognitive Functions, Sugarloaf Conference Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 20–24 May 1989
Mask of a photo of participants of The Developmental and Neural Coginitive Functions, Sugar Loaf Conference Centre, Philadelphia, PA, 20-24 May 1989.jpg
Participants as seen in the photo above: 1. Susan Rose, 2. Judy DeLoache, 3. William Overman, 4. Nathan Fox, 5. Kathryn Boyer, 6. Gerry Stefanatos, 7. Arthur Shimamura, 8. Nora Newcombe, 9. Stuart Zola-Morgan, 10. Judy Chasin, 11. Teresa Pantzer, 12. Barbara Malamut, 13. Adele Diamond, 14. Norman Krasnegor, 15. Marie Perri, 16. Jim Cummings, 17. Linda Acredolo, 18. Keith Nelson, 19. Barry Stein, 20. Rachel Clifton, 21. Richard Nakaniura, 22. Jackson Beatty, 23. Joseph Fagan, 24. Suzanne Craft, 25. Lewis Lipsitt, 26. Eric Knudsen, 27. Wendell Jeffrey, 28. Jonathan Cohen, 29. Joaquin Fuster, 30. Andrew Meltzoff, 31. Daniel Schacter, 32. Phillip Best, 33. Mark Stanton, 34. Douglas Frost, 35. Carolyn Rovee-Collier, 36. Paul Solomon, 37. Claire Kopp, 38. Lynn Nadel, 39. Helen Neville, 40. Emilie Marcus, 41. Richard Thompson, 42. Paula Tallal, 43. Robbie Case, 44. Henry Roediger III, 45. James Ranck Jr., 46. Ruth Colwill, 47. H. G. J. M. Kuypers, 48. Jocelyne Bachevalier, 49. Michael Noetzel, 50. Janet Werker, 51. Mike Richardson, 52. W. Stuart Millar, 53. Steven Keele, 54. Jean Mandler

The origin of the discipline of developmental cognitive neuroscience can be traced back to conference held in Philadelphia in 1989 co-funded by NICHD & NIMH, organized by Adele Diamond, that started the process of developmental psychologists, cognitive scientists, and neuroscientists talking with one another. To bridge the communication gaps, researchers were invited from different fields who were either using the same experimental paradigms to study the same behaviors or were investigating related scientific questions in complementary ways—though they were unaware of one another’s work. They used different words to talk about their work and had different ways of thinking about it, but the concrete, observable behaviors, and the precise experimental conditions under which those behaviors occurred, served to make translation possible. Participants were a small Who’s Who of leaders in developmental science, behavioral neuroscience, and cognitive science. Several new cross-disciplinary collaborations resulted from it, and it is a testament to the value of what came out of the meeting that Oxford University Press tried to acquire the rights to re-issue the book of the meeting’s proceedings 10 years later—The Development and Neural Basis of Higher Cognitive Functions. (The original printing sold out faster than any other New York Academy of Science Annals issue has before or since.) [26]

Developmental psychologists and neuroscientists used to know little of one another’s work. There was so little communication between those fields that for 50 years scientists in both fields were using essentially the same behavioral assay but they did not know it. (Developmental psychologists called the measure the A-not-B task but neuroscientists called it the delayed response task.) In the early 1980s, Diamond not only showed these two tasks showed the identical developmental progression and rely on the same region of prefrontal cortex but through a systematic series of studies in human infants, and infant and adult monkeys with and without lesions to different brain regions. [27] [28] That work was absolutely pivotal in launching the field of developmental cognitive neuroscience because it established the very first strong link between early cognitive development and the functions of a specific brain region. That gave encouragement to others that rigorous experimental work addressing brain-behavior relations was possible in infants. It also fundamentally altered the scientific understanding of prefrontal cortex early in development; clearly it was not silent as accepted wisdom had held.

Mark Johnson's 1997 text Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience [9] was seminal in coining the field's name.

Tools and techniques employed

Absolutely critical to being able to understand brain function in children have been neuroimaging techniques, [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] first EEG & ERPs, [34] [35] [36] then fMRI, [37] [38] and more recently NIRS, [39] [40] MEG, [41] [42] & TMS [43] [44] that look at function and MRI, DTI, & MRS that look at structure, connectivity, and metabolism. Before functional neuroimaging techniques scientists were constrained to trying to understand function from dysfunction (i.e., trying to understand how the brain works from seeing what deficits occur when the brain is damaged or impaired). It is difficult to understate how important technological advances have been to the emerging field of developmental cognitive neuroscience.

When doing in vivo analysis of the brain, we can use neuroimaging techniques to gain insights in order to further study developmental cognitive processes. By using these techniques to measure function in healthy children, as well as unhealthy children, we study the structure and anatomy of the brain, as well as connectivity and function, all of which can further enhance our greater understanding of the relationship between the human brain and behavior. The most interesting angle for developmental neuroimaging is the ability to learn more about how changes to the brain system that occur throughout childhood affect the development of cognitive abilities. It also allows researchers to explore questions that are typically referred to as “nature” versus “nurture.” By using neuroimaging techniques, we can understand the biological process that underlie cognition and the relationship that it has with other external factors, like environmental exposures, learning, and collective life experiences.

EEG & ERPs: In the early to mid 1980s, early components of the Event Related Potential (ERP) were used to study sensory functioning in infants and late components of ERP were used to study cognitive functioning in adults. Scientists then proceeded to expand the use of ERP to study cognitive functioning earlier on in life to gain insights into the brain’s involvement in different processes such as discrimination, categorization, and memory.


Challenges of EEG for Developmental Neuroimaging


MEG : MEG is a neuroimaging technique that records the magnetic fields that are generated by neural activity. A key advantage of this imaging technique is that it provides excellent spatial localization, as well as high temporal resolution of neural events. Like a lot of other popular non-invasive functional neuroimaging techniques such as fMRI and EEG/ERP, it has no harmful effects, no side effects, and no long-term detrimental effects. This means that using its attractive for use in research involving healthy populations and for use in developmental studies and in longitudinal developmental studies.

Data Collection: There are technical and subject factors that come into play when it comes to collecting MEG data for developmental studies.

Data Interpretation: When interpreting MEG data for developmental studies, there are many ways to analyze it since it is compounded with richness. Although, there are anatomical and physiological developments that can impact the observed results and if unfamiliar with these changes, a researcher could wrongly make an interpretation.


fMRI: The use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in developmental populations has increased significantly over the past two decades. Most developmental fMRI research uses cross-sectional sections, examining differences and similarities between children, adolescents, and adults. Although, the use of a cross-sectional study is limited in its ability to provide information about how brain function matures within a population. Therefore, the use of longitudinal fMRI studies offer the advantage of studying developmental processes and removing inter-subject variability. They also do not make any assumptions about the brain-behavior relationship, which makes them well suited to studying developmental changes.

See also

Further reading

References

  1. Cantlon, Jessica F.; Elizabeth M. Brannon (2006). "Shared system for ordering small and large numbers in monkeys and humans". Psychol. Sci. 17 (5): 401–406. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01719.x. PMID   16683927. S2CID   1781257. Closed Access logo transparent.svg
  2. Egan, Louisa C.; Paul Bloom; Laurie R. Santos (2010). "Choice-induced preferences in the absence of choice: Evidence from a blind two choice paradigm with young children and capuchin monkeys". J. Exp. Soc. Psychol. 46 (1): 204–207. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2009.08.014. Closed Access logo transparent.svg
  3. Warneken, Felix; Michael Tomasello (2006). "Altruistic helping in human infants and young chimpanzees". Science . 311 (5765): 1301–1303. doi:10.1126/science.1121448. PMID   16513986. S2CID   1119115. Closed Access logo transparent.svg
  4. Zeamer, Alyson; Eric Heuer; Jocelyne Bachevalier (2010). "Developmental trajectory of object recognition memory in infant rhesus macaques with and without neonatal hippocampal lesions". J. Neurosci. 30 (27): 9157–9165. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0022-10.2010. PMC   2913301 . PMID   20610749. Open Access logo PLoS transparent.svg
  5. 1 2 Nelson, Charles A.; Monica Luciana (2001). Handbook of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience (2 ed.). The MIT Press. ISBN   978-0262140737.
  6. Nelson, Charles A.; Monica Luciana (2001). Handbook of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience (1 ed.). The MIT Press. ISBN   978-0262141048.
  7. Johnson, Mark H.; Yuko Munakata; Rick O. Gilmore (2002). Brain Development and Cognition: A Reader (2 ed.). Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN   978-0631217374.
  8. Munakata, Yuko; B. J. Casey; Adele Diamond (2004). "Developmental cognitive neuroscience: Progress and potential". Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 8 (3): 122–128. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.507.6722 . doi:10.1016/j.tics.2004.01.005. PMID   15301752. S2CID   2628973.
  9. 1 2 3 Johnson, Mark H.; Michelle de Haan (2010). Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience (3 ed.). Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN   978-1444330861.
  10. Diamond, Adele; Lisa Briand; John Fossella; Lorrie Gehlbach (2004). "Genetic and neurochemical modulation of prefrontal cognitive functions in children". American Journal of Psychiatry. 161 (1): 125–132. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.694.7254 . doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.161.1.125. PMID   14702260. S2CID   2341627.
  11. Dumontheil, Iroise; Chantal Roggeman; Tim Ziermans; Myriam Peyrard-Janvid; Hans Matsson; Juha Kere; Torkel Klingberg (2011). "Influence of the COMT genotype on working memory and brain activity changes during development" (PDF). Biological Psychiatry. 70 (3): 222–229. doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2011.02.027. PMID   21514925. S2CID   2521037.
  12. Rothbart, Mary K.; Brad E. Sheese; Michael I. Posner (2007). "Executive attention and effortful control: Linking temperament, brain networks, and genes". Child Development Perspectives. 1 (1): 2–7. doi:10.1111/j.1750-8606.2007.00002.x.
  13. Scerif, Gaia; Annette Karmiloff-Smith (2005). "The dawn of cognitive genetics? Crucial developmental caveats". Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 9 (3): 126–135. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2005.01.008. PMID   15737821. S2CID   5249124.
  14. Dehaene, Stanislas; Felipe Pegado; Lucia W. Braga; Paulo Ventura; Gilberto Nunes Filho; Antoinette Jobert; Ghislaine Dehaene-Lambertz; Régine Kolinsky; José Morais; Laurent Cohen (2010). "How learning to read changes the cortical networks for vision and language" (PDF). Science. 330 (6009): 1359–1364. doi:10.1126/science.1194140. PMID   21071632. S2CID   1359577.
  15. Dehaene, Stanislas (2011). Space, time and number in the brain: Searching for the foundations of mathematical thought. Academic Press. ISBN   978-0123859488.
  16. Diamond, Adele (2011). "Biological and social influences on cognitive control processes dependent on prefrontal cortex". Gene Expression to Neurobiology and Behavior: Human Brain Development and Developmental Disorders. Progress in Brain Research. Vol. 189. pp. 319–339. doi:10.1016/b978-0-444-53884-0.00032-4. ISBN   9780444538840. PMC   4103914 . PMID   21489397.
  17. Elman, Jeffrey L.; Elizabeth A. Bates; Mark H. Johnson; Annette Karmiloff-Smith (1998). Rethinking innateness: A connectionist perspective on development. The MIT press. ISBN   978-0262550307.
  18. Johnson, Mark H. (1999). "Cortical plasticity in normal and abnormal cognitive development: Evidence and working hypotheses". Development and Psychopathology. 11 (3): 419–437. doi:10.1017/s0954579499002138. PMID   10532617. S2CID   27151506.
  19. Johnson, Mark H. (2000). "Functional brain development in infants: Elements of an interactive specialization framework". Child Development. 71 (1): 75–81. doi:10.1111/1467-8624.00120. PMID   10836560.
  20. Karmiloff-Smith, Annette (2013). "Challenging the use of adult neuropsychological models for explaining neurodevelopmental disorders: Developed versus developing brains". The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. 66 (1): 1–14. doi:10.1080/17470218.2012.744424. PMID   23173948. S2CID   7107904.
  21. Karmiloff-Smith, Annette (2009). "Nativism versus neuroconstructivism: rethinking the study of developmental disorders". Developmental Psychology. 45 (1): 56–63. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.233.1714 . doi:10.1037/a0014506. PMID   19209990.
  22. Kuhl, Patricia K. (2000). "Language, mind, and brain: Experience alters perception". The New Cognitive Neurosciences. 2: 99–115.
  23. Meltzoff, Andrew N.; Patricia K. Kuhl; Javier Movellan; Terrence J. Sejnowski (2009). "Foundations for a new science of learning". Science. 325 (5938): 284–288. doi:10.1126/science.1175626. PMC   2776823 . PMID   19608908.
  24. Neville, Helen J.; Daphne Bavelier (2000). "Specificity and plasticity in neurocognitive development in humans". The New Cognitive Neurosciences. 2: 83–98.
  25. Stevens, Courtney; Helen Neville (2006). "Neuroplasticity as a double-edged sword: Deaf enhancements and dyslexic deficits in motion processing". Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 18 (5): 701–714. doi:10.1162/jocn.2006.18.5.701. PMID   16768371. S2CID   15986921.
  26. Diamond, Adele (1990). "Development and neural bases of higher cognitive functions". New York Academy of Sciences.
  27. Diamond, Adele (1991). "Frontal lobe involvement in cognitive changes during the first year of life". Brain Maturation and Cognitive Development: Comparative and Cross-cultural Perspectives: 127–180.
  28. Diamond, Adele (1991). "Neuropsychological insights into the meaning of object concept development". The Epigenesis of Mind: Essays on Biology and Knowledge: 67–110.
  29. Casey, B. J.; Yuko Munakata (2002). "Converging methods in developmental science: An introduction". Developmental Psychobiology. 40 (3): 197–199. doi:10.1002/dev.10026. PMID   11891632.
  30. Casey, B. J.; Nim Tottenham; Conor Liston; Sarah Durston (2005). "Imaging the developing brain: what have we learned about cognitive development?". Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 9 (3): 104–110. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2005.01.011. PMID   15737818. S2CID   6331990.
  31. Dubois, J.; G. Dehaene-Lambertz; S. Kulikova; C. Poupon; P. S. Hüppi; L. Hertz-Pannier (2013). "The early development of brain white matter: A review of imaging studies in fetuses, newborns and infants" (PDF). Neuroscience. 276: 48–71. doi:10.1016/j.neuroscience.2013.12.044. PMID   24378955. S2CID   8593971.
  32. Neville, Helen J.; Debra L. Mills; Donald S. Lawson (1992). "Fractionating language: Different neural subsystems with different sensitive periods". Cerebral Cortex. 2 (3): 244–58. doi:10.1093/cercor/2.3.244. PMID   1511223.
  33. Raschle, Nora; Jennifer Zuk; Silvia Ortiz-Mantilla; Danielle D. Sliva; Angela Franceschi; P. Ellen Grant; April A. Benasich; Nadine Gaab (2012). "Pediatric neuroimaging in early childhood and infancy: challenges and practical guidelines". Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 1252 (1): 43–50. doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.2012.06457.x. PMC   3499030 . PMID   22524338.
  34. Csibra, Gergely; Leslie A. Tucker; Mark H. Johnson (1998). "Neural correlates of saccade planning in infants: A high-density ERP study". International Journal of Psychophysiology. 29 (2): 201–215. doi:10.1016/s0167-8760(98)00016-6. PMID   9664228.
  35. Nelson, Charles A; Philip Salapatek (1986). "Electrophysiological correlates of infant recognition memory". Child Development. 57 (6): 1486–1497. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.1986.tb00473.x. PMID   3802973.
  36. Rueda, M. Rosario; Michael I. Posner; Mary K. Rothbart; Clintin P. Davis-Stober (2004). "Development of the time course for processing conflict: an event-related potentials study with 4 year olds and adults". BMC Neuroscience. 5 (1): 39. doi: 10.1186/1471-2202-5-39 . PMC   529252 . PMID   15500693.
  37. Klingberg, Torkel; Hans Forssberg; Helena Westerberg (2002). "Increased brain activity in frontal and parietal cortex underlies the development of visuospatial working memory capacity during childhood". Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 14 (1): 1–10. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.536.737 . doi:10.1162/089892902317205276. PMID   11798382. S2CID   16517511.
  38. Nelson, Charles A.; Christopher S. Monk; Joseph Lin; Leslie J. Carver; Kathleen M. Thomas; Charles L. Truwit (2000). "Functional neuroanatomy of spatial working memory in children". Developmental Psychology. 36 (1): 109–116. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.596.4679 . doi:10.1037/0012-1649.36.1.109. PMID   10645748.
  39. Sakatani, Kaoru; Saying Chen; Wemara Lichty; Huancong Zuo; Yu-ping Wang (1999). "Cerebral blood oxygenation changes induced by auditory stimulation in newborn infants measured by near infrared spectroscopy". Early Human Development. 55 (3): 229–236. doi:10.1016/s0378-3782(99)00019-5. PMID   10463787.
  40. Schroeter, Matthias L.; Stefan Zysset; Margarethe Wahl; D. Yves von Cramon (2004). "Prefrontal activation due to Stroop interference increases during development—an event-related fNIRS study". NeuroImage. 23 (4): 1317–1325. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2004.08.001. PMID   15589096. S2CID   21972264.
  41. Ciesielski, Kristina T.; Seppo P. Ahlfors; Edward J. Bedrick; Audra A. Kerwin; Matti S. Hämäläinen (2010). "Top-down control of MEG alpha-band activity in children performing Categorical N-Back Task". Neuropsychologia. 48 (12): 3573–3579. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2010.08.006. PMC   2976845 . PMID   20713071.
  42. Taylor, M. J.; E. J. Donner; E. W. Pang (2012). "fMRI and MEG in the study of typical and atypical cognitive development". Neurophysiologie Clinique/Clinical Neurophysiology. 42 (1): 19–25. doi:10.1016/j.neucli.2011.08.002. PMID   22200338. S2CID   46361598.
  43. Gaillard, W. D.; S. Y. Bookheimer; L. Hertz-Pannier; T. A. Blaxton (1997). "The noninvasive identification of language function. Neuroimaging and rapid transcranial magnetic stimulation". Neurosurgery Clinics of North America. 8 (3): 321–335. doi:10.1016/S1042-3680(18)30307-3. PMID   9188541.
  44. Vry, Julia; Michaela Linder-Lucht; Steffen Berweck; Ulrike Bonati; Maike Hodapp; Markus Uhl; Michael Faist; Volker Mall (2008). "Altered cortical inhibitory function in children with spastic diplegia: a TMS study". Experimental Brain Research. 186 (4): 611–618. doi:10.1007/s00221-007-1267-7. PMID   18214452. S2CID   6677991.
  45. Karmiloff-Smith, Annette (1996). Beyond Modularity: A Developmental Perspective on Cognitive Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN   978-0-262-61114-5.
  46. Elman, Jeffrey; et al. (1996). Rethinking Innateness: A Connectionist Perspective on Development . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN   978-0-262-55030-7.
  47. The Scopus Citation Tracker
  48. "Millenium Project Nominations". Archived from the original on 2008-06-24. Retrieved 2008-06-05.
  49. Mareschal, Denis; et al. (2007). Neuroconstructivism: Volumes I & II (Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0-19-921482-2.