Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, including details on pregnancy, birth defects, causes, symptoms, treatment.

Mapping brain maturation.

Toga AW, Thompson PM, Sowell ER

Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, Department of Neurology, UCLA School of Medicine, 635 Charles E. Young Drive South,Suite 225, Los Angeles, CA 90095-7332, USA.

Human brain maturation is a complex, lifelong process that can now be examined in detail using neuroimaging techniques. Ongoing projects scan subjects longitudinally with structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), enabling the time-course and anatomical sequence of development to be reconstructed. Here, we review recent progress on imaging studies of development. We focus on cortical and subcortical changes observed in healthy children, and contrast them with abnormal developmental changes in early-onset schizophrenia, fetal alcohol syndrome, attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and Williams syndrome. We relate these structural changes to the cellular processes that underlie them, and to cognitive and behavioral changes occurring throughout childhood and adolescence.

Published 6 March 2006 in Trends Neurosci, 29(3): 148-59.
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