A review of cognitive outcome after unilateral lesions sustained during childhood.

Views on human brain organization early in development have swung back and forth between the extreme notions of complete equipotentiality and adult-like specialization. Recent research on the cognitive effects of early brain damage supports an intermediate position and suggests that many claims on the older literature must be re-examined in the light of new evidence that cognitive impairments are sometimes attributable to previously ignored factors, such as a history of seizures, time since injury, and unsuspected lesions that are now detectable with neuroimaging techniques.