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 Research & Giving News Article  Mapping normal brain development to improve insight into abnormal development Reporting in the November issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, the authors state that major advances in neuroimaging technology now permit detailed study of the maturation of the human brain. The delineation of normal maturational trajectories “provides an invaluable and necessary template from which to identify deviant patterns of brain development in children who have neuropsychiatric disorders.” Disturbances in these patterns, they explain, appears to be “involved centrally in the pathogenesis of various childhood psychiatric disorders, including childhood-onset schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, developmental dyslexia, Tourette’s syndrome and bipolar disorder.” Until now, much of what was known about fetal and early postnatal brain development has been extrapolated from animal studies or from sparse postmortem and imaging data in humans and other primates. Now, the use of functional MRI (fMRI) permits noninvasive, safe exploration of structure and function across development, allowing identification of where, when and how cognitive abilities develop in relation to the maturation of brain structures. The researchers review the data for maturation of brain anatomy from fetal life through senescence and summarize findings from functional imaging studies that have assessed age-related changes in activity in neural systems that subserve higher-order cognitive functions throughout childhood and adulthood, particularly the development of the capacities for language development and for cognitive and emotional control. The researchers conclude by saying that “future longitudinal, or long-term, studies are needed to compare the normal and atypical developmental trajectories of cognitive and emotional control processes in individuals with and without psychopathology, as well as pediatric studies cross-comparing data from a variety of imaging techniques in large samples over time.” |
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