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Contributions of Neuroscience to Our Understanding of Cognitive Development
Adele Diamond 1 and Dima Amso 2
  1 Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, and Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, BC Children's Hospital, Vancouver, Canada; and   2 Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology, Weill Medical College of Cornell University
 Address correspondence to Adele Diamond, Canada Research Chair Professor of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, 2255 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 2A1, Canada; e-mail: adele.diamond@ubc.ca.
Copyright © 2008 Association for Psychological Science
KEYWORDS
plasticity • epigenesis • mothering • executive functions • animal models • molecular genetics • memory

ABSTRACT

ABSTRACT—One major contribution of neuroscience to understanding cognitive development has been in demonstrating that biology is not destiny—that is, demonstrating the remarkable role of experience in shaping the mind, brain, and body. Only rarely has neuroscience provided wholly new insights into cognitive development, but often it has provided evidence of mechanisms by which observations of developmental psychologists could be explained. Behavioral findings have often remained controversial until an underlying biological mechanism for them was offered. Neuroscience has demonstrated promise for detecting cognitive problems before they are behaviorally observable—and, hence, promise for early intervention. In this article, we discuss examples drawn from imitation and mirror neurons, phenylketonuria (PKU) and prefrontal dopamine, maternal touch and stress reactivity, and nongenetic (behavioral) intergenerational transmission of biological characteristics.

DIGITAL OBJECT IDENTIFIER (DOI)
10.1111/j.1467-8721.2008.00563.x About DOI

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