Stiles Joan, Reilly Judy, Paul Brianna, Moses Pamela
Department of Cognitive Science, University of California-San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0515, USA.
Trends Cogn Sci. 2005 Mar;9(3):136-43. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2005.01.002.
Over the past few decades a large body of work from developmental neurobiology has shown that mammalian brain development is the product of dynamic and adaptive processes operating within highly constrained, but continually changing, biological and environmental contexts. The recent study of children with prenatal focal brain injury supports this dynamic view of development for humans. Children's injuries often affect substantial portions of one cerebral hemisphere, resulting in damage that would compromise cognitive ability in adults. However, longitudinal behavioral studies of this population have revealed only mild deficits. It is suggested here that children's capacity for adaptation reflects normal developmental processes operating against a backdrop of serious neural perturbation. Data from three behavioral domains--linguistics, spatial cognition and affective development--illustrate this complex profile of change.
在过去几十年里，发育神经生物学的大量研究表明，哺乳动物的大脑发育是在高度受限但不断变化的生物和环境背景下，由动态和适应性过程产生的结果。最近对产前局灶性脑损伤儿童的研究支持了人类发育的这种动态观点。儿童的损伤常常影响一个大脑半球的大部分区域，导致的损伤在成人中会损害认知能力。然而，对这一群体的纵向行为研究仅揭示了轻微的缺陷。本文认为，儿童的适应能力反映了在严重神经干扰背景下正常的发育过程。来自语言、空间认知和情感发展这三个行为领域的数据说明了这种复杂的变化情况。
