'Fundamentals of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience' by Bortfeld and Bunge, A book review by Brenda Walker

31st Jul 2024

BNA Associate member, Brenda Walker, shares her review of the book 'Fundamentals of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience', Heather Bortfeld and Silvia A. Bunge, Cambridge University Press, 2024

HEATHER BORTFELD AND SILVIA A. BUNGE

     This is the 13th volume of the FUNDAMENTALS OF NEUROSCIENCE IN PSYCHOLOGY SERIES produced by Cambridge University Press; a series that ‘aims to provide brief Introductions to key areas of neuroscience research across major domains of psychology. Written by experts in cognitive, social, affective, developmental, clinical or applied neuroscience, these books will serve as ideal primers for students and other readers seeking an entry point to the challenging world of Neuroscience.’  

      Many books have been written on the cognitive aspect of neuroscience, but one of the first pioneers in developmental cognitive neuroscience was Mark H. Johnson from the University of Cambridge, now featured as the first of the Distinguished Scientist Spotlight sections in this new 2024 volume, Fundamentals of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience. The authors, Professor Heather Bortfeld and Professor Silvia A. Bunge, from the University of California (at Mersted and Berkeley), have continued the challenge of combining fundamental cognitive neuroscience with its developmental aspects (DCN) and state they hope to ‘spark students curiosity’ while exploring where biological studies of the brain and behavioural studies of human development merge; in other words while ‘studying the developing brain’.  They explain that this volume was conceived  ‘after many years of culling and revising reading lists to cover those topics and address those needs, we realised that we ourselves would benefit from a coherent presentation of them all together and in one place – and we thought others would as well’.   Motivated by similar interests and research from the prenatal period through to adolescence, the authors set out to explore this recent science from its roots in developmental psychology and neuroscience; their ‘goal’ being to help students ‘think deeply and critically about human development, so they can evaluate studies and formulate questions that are addressable through the methods and techniques of DCN’.   

     This volume is a dense up-to-date textbook, on how the developing brain is linked to the developing mind. Rich in factual information and pedagogy, the section ‘Teaching with this book’ addresses those who plan to present the material within semester-long or shorter courses. Students are expected to have completed a high-school level of biology and have some knowledge of Psychology. However, the authors state that because the brain and its networks are introduced when relevant, students can commence the course without a great knowledge of neuroanatomy, although without any neuroscience background some kind of introductory course would be valuable. The material presented in the book is referred to as a journey... a story,  and teachers are encouraged to add to this ‘story’ with their own data, experiences and interpretations, as well as any current publicity in the media regarding recent research, and ensuing  issues.  Throughout, the reader is reminded that a body of evidence rather than a one-off experiment is necessary for a clear picture to emerge and even that will continue to evolve, as will DCN, when more data is contributed over time via a variety of sources, and not always from a literature search. 

     The authors’ mention how excited they felt when writing this book and hope that whatever teaching approach is chosen, the course will prove equally exciting for both student and teacher. Written for graduate and undergraduate courses in developmental cognition or neuroscience, it is well laid out, designed to help the student, but also to guide any teacher who is looking for a book where a long, attractive and important course is readily available.  Those teachers who can visualize possible future developments of this new interdisciplinary field and also share the authors’ insight as to where such changes in understanding  and the use of novel technical advances might lead, especially in Society, Childcare, Public Health, Policy Making, the Justice System and Education, must surely welcome Bortfeld and Bunge’s fine contribution. 

     The structure of the book is well defined, for the excellent preface clearly delineates the content of each of the 14 chapters, twelve of which are given to specific areas in an ‘arc of information’. The first gives an introduction to developmental cognitive neuroscience while the last, looks towards future directions in the key themes of their overall presentation. The Preface starts by asking the reader three questions. ‘How does the brain change as the child ages?’ ‘How do various genotypes and inputs from the environment affect the developing brain’ and – ‘How do such changes manifest as changes in behaviour?’  Similar questions are said to have ‘driven’ their research. 

      The format of the first chapter, INTRODUCTION TO DEVELOPMENTAL COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE, contains an overview in sections, one of which presents Professor Mark H. Johnson in the Spotlight Box.  Head of the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge, he describes how he and colleagues pioneered DCN and watched ‘the emergence of a new branch of science’ resulting in the first DCN textbook. He mentions the influence of  the FLUX Society and the fascinating growth of  ‘Interactive Specialization’ where we see the brain ‘NOT in terms of a mosaic of isolated regions with independent schedules, but rather each region developing within the context of all its neighbouring connections including their hierarchical connectivity structure’. At present, his laboratory studies are said to be: typical, at-risk, and atypical functional brain development in human infants and toddlers, using brain imaging, cognitive, behavioural, genetic and computational modelling techniques. 

Section titles are detailed as follows:                       What is DCN? 

Levels of Analysis and Levels of Structure. 

What Do We Gain from Understanding How the Brain Develops?’ 

Brief History of the Field. 

Why Study Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience? (or How Do I tell Grandma What I’m Studying?) 

What to Expect. 

     Subsequent chapters begin with a list of Learning Objectives and end with a Summary; Review Questions; Further Reading; and up to date References. Over a hundred coloured Figures, illustrations, and photographs abound, clearly labelled and appropriately spaced. Additional help for students is an occasional highlighted Box of clearly stated details, such as Physics behind MRI techniques, while other boxes each present spotlights on a particular distinguished Scientist in the field. These scientists all write in a personal style expressing how they came to be interested in their subject, along with present and past career experiences, followed by their research discoveries. It was brilliant idea to include such additional evidence and support for the full range of this volume’s content, as such contributions allow the reader   ‘a deeper dive’ specific to each area. To give the prospective purchaser of this volume a sample of the expertise of these scientists, starting with Chapter 2, a selection of the published biographical details are included, not all verbatim, along with chapter headings. 

2. METHODS AND POPULATIONS – DAMIEN FAIR Professor of Child Development and Department of Paediatrics at the University of Minnesota. Current job is building up the new Masonic Institute of the Developing Brain led by the University of Minnesota’s Medical School and the College of Education and Human Development. Measuring the functional connectivity of the brain (its functional network) together with data analysis, has been an essential part of this work.  

3. GENES AND EPIGETICS – MICHAEL J MEANEY is a James McGill Professor of Medicine in Canada with special interests in genes and epigenetics leading to the discovery of novel epigenetic mechanisms for the influence of early experience. His early influences were Donald Hebb (Nature and Nurture) and then with the late Bruce McEwen (Stress hormones alter Neurons). 

4. BRAIN DEVELOPMENT – TERRY JERNIGAN is Professor of Cognitive Science, Psychiatry and Radiology and Director of the Center for Human Development at the University of California, San Diego. She is also Center co-ordinator for the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study. By using the power of multivariate and machine learning methods, she now has clear evidence from in-vivo brain imaging that biological development of the brain continues over a much more protracted time postnatally, and that the human genome ‘gives rise to the brain’s biological processes and every brain has a biological life span’.  

5. BRAIN PLASTCITY – TAKAO HENCH is Professor of Molecular Cellular Biology at the Harvard University Center for Brain Science and in Neurology at Harvard Medical School. Hench’s Lab has studied: how early experience shapes brain-development; probing the cellular and molecular mechanisms that govern the opening and closure of critical periods of brain plasticity. 

6. ATTENTON AND PERCEPTION – JANET WERKER is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia, where she directs the Infant Studies Centre. She is also the founder of the Early Development Research group, a consortium focused on the development of language, learning and social understanding. 

7. SOCIAL COCNITION – SALLY J. ROGERS is a Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Department of Psychiatry MIND Institute, University of California, Davis, and co-developed the Early Start Denver Model. Her Specialism has been helping young children with neurodevelopmental conditions access successful intervention. 

8. LANGUAGE LEARNING AND SOCIAL INTERACTION – DR. GHISLAINE DEHAENE-LAMBERTZ is CNRS Scientific Director of the Developmental Neuroimaging lab at Neurospin, a brain imaging platform dedicated to the human brain in the suburbs of Paris. Originally trained as a paediatrician, she added a PhD in Life and Health Sciences at the Universitè Paris VI to her MD in order to pursue research on the developments of cognitive functions in infants and children using brain imaging techniques.  

9. MEMORY SYSTEMS – SIMONA GHETTI is a Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis, where she directs the Memory and Development Laboratory. Ghetti earned her professional doctoral degree in developmental Psychology at UC Davis and moved on to a tenured research professor position at the National Research Council in Bologna, Italy before returning. She uses behavioural, brain imaging, and eye-tracking methods to study long-term memory development. 

10. WORKING MEMORY AND EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONS – BEATRIZ LUNA is the Staunton Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics as well as Professor of Psychology and faculty of the Center for Neural Basis of cognition at the University of Pittsburgh, where she directs the Laboratory of Neurocognitive Development.  From 2013, Luna has been a founding President of the FLUX Society which is the International Congress for Integrative Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience. She is also currently Editor-in-Chief of the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience journal. 

11. LANGUAGE AND LITERACY – FUMIKO HOEFT is a Professor in Psychological Sciences, Mathematics, Neuroscience and Psychiatry, and Director of the Brain Imaging Research Center at the University of Connecticut. She is also Adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. Hoeft studies the neural basis of dyslexia and individual differences in learning to read. 

12. NUMERACY – DANIEL ANSARI is a Professor and Canada Research chair in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning in the Department of Psychology, the Faculty of Education, and the Brain and Mind Institute at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, where he directs the Numerical Cognition Laboratory. He studies the development of numerical cognition in typically and atypically developing children.  

13. MOTIVATED BEHAVIOR AND SELF-CONTROL – EVELINE CRONE is a Professor of Neuroscience in Society at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, and a Professor in Neurocognitive Developmental Psychology at Leiden University.  She has also served as Vice-President of the European Research Council. She studies adolescent brain development and is interested in this period of life as a window of social opportunity. 

       Any lengthy, dense, informative textbook, even if exciting for its content, can be tediously academic to read. A student at whatever level welcomes the sense of an author’s voice behind the given text and this is hard to produce when two authors make it necessary to use the subject pronoun WE throughout. Bortfeld and Bunge have tried hard to amalgamate their styles, but some readers may be aware that occasionally a very formal voice appears to dominate, whereas at other times, a different voice glides comfortably through the academic theory interspersing it with the odd student- friendly word or phrase. Everyone has their own style – of speaking and for phrasing the written word, but in general, Bortfeld and Bunge have succeeded in the difficult task of joint authorship. It is but slight criticism for the creation of a volume of work with such a rich background of research and advice, gleaned not only from research but from life with all its diversity, adversity, problems and rewards.  

      Students who wish to continue asking or answering the still unsolved questions, as well as those who either use the book in their teaching or just for browsing, must surely be inspired to use the knowledge they have gained so as to improve or continue to extract ‘the bones of each story’ on their journey to explore more of their relevance to humanity’s Mind, Brain and Education. 

 Brenda Walker, July 2024