Brain development and CNS plasticity

Since the first developmental studies using fMRI there has been an almost logarithmic growth of investigations regarding functional brain development. This growing knowledge, in combination with landmark animal studies of developmental neuroplasticity, has provided us with significant insight into the nature of brain development and how brain maturation might map onto behavior. Throughout this chapter we discuss how a number of related developmental phenomena (e.g., myelination, pruning, spontaneous activity, neuroplasticity, etc.) interact to produce a common trajectory for the typically developing brain. We also point out that much of our knowledge concerning typical development comes from studies examining neuroplasticity. In addition, we highlight the growing evidence suggesting that abnormal neuroplasticity may contribute to neuropsychiatric disorders by altering typical developmental trajectories of many brain interactions across broad cortical and subcortical networks. We emphasize how such phenomena may not only be related to neurological and psychiatric disorders of development, but disorders in adulthood as well.