Principles and Practice of Lifespan Developmental Neuropsychology (Cambridge Medicine (Hardcover))

Editorial Reviews. Review. "Although this book is intended for neuropsychologists, clinical Principles and Practice of Lifespan Developmental Neuropsychology (Cambridge Medicine (Hardcover)) 1st Edition, Kindle Edition. by Jacobus.
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Experimental Brain Research, Vol. Neuropsychological Disorders Across the Lifespan: Cambridge University Press Online publication date: May Print publication year: Export citation Recommend to librarian Recommend this book. Principles and Practice of Lifespan Developmental Neuropsychology. Edited by Jacobus Donders , Scott J. Please enter a valid email address Email already added. Actions for selected content:. Please be advised that item s you selected are not available. Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle email.

By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Save Search You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches". Get access Check if you have access via personal or institutional login. This can be given special treatment but the parent usually cannot do anything about the situation.

The capacity for empathy and the understanding of social rules begin in the preschool period and continue to develop into adulthood. Some aspects of social-emotional development, [ citation needed ] like empathy, [ citation needed ] develop gradually, but others, like fearfulness, [ citation needed ] seem to involve a rather sudden reorganization of the child's experience of emotion. Genetic factors appear to regulate some social-emotional developments that occur at predictable ages, such as fearfulness, and attachment to familiar people.

Experience plays a role in determining which people are familiar, which social rules are obeyed, and how anger is expressed. Parenting practices have been shown to predict children's emotional intelligence. The objective is to study the time mothers and children spent together in joint activity, the types of activities that they develop when they are together, and the relation that those activities have with the children's trait emotional intelligence. Correlations between time variables and trait emotional intelligence dimensions were computed using Pearson's Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient.

Partial correlations between the same variables controlling for responsive parenting were also computed. The amount of time mothers spent with their children and the quality of their interactions are important in terms of children's trait emotional intelligence, not only because those times of joint activity reflect a more positive parenting, but because they are likely to promote modeling, reinforcement, shared attention, and social cooperation.

Population differences may occur in older children, if, for example, they have learned that it is appropriate for boys to express emotion or behave differently from girls, [ citation needed ] or if customs learned by children of one ethnic group are different from those learned in another. Language serves the purpose of communication to express oneself through a systematic and traditional use of sounds, signs, or written symbols.

They include phonology, lexicon, morphology and syntax, and pragmatics. This happens in three stages. First, each word means an entire sentence. This stage occurs around age two or three. Third, around age seven or eight, words have adult-like definitions and their meanings are more complete. A child learns the syntax of their language when they are able to join words together into sentences and understand multiple-word sentences said by other people. This stage usually occurs between 12 and 18 months of age.

Principles and Practice of Lifespan Developmental Neuropsychology Cambridge Medicine Hardcover

Second, between 18 months to two years, there is the modification stage where children communicate relationships by modifying a topic word. The third stage, between two and three years old, involves the child using complete subject-predicate structures to communicate relationships. Fourth, children make changes on basic sentence structure that enables them to communicate more complex relationships. This stage occurs between the ages of two and a half years to four years.

The fifth stage of categorization involves children aged three and a half to seven years refining their sentences with more purposeful word choice that reflects their complex system of categorizing word types. Finally, children use structures of language that involve more complicate syntactic relationships between the ages of five years old to ten years old. Infants begin with cooing and soft vowel sounds. Shortly after birth, this system is developed as the infants begin to understand that their noises, or non-verbal communication, lead to a response from their caregiver.

Eventually, they are able to add pronouns to words and combine them to form short sentences.


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By age 1, the child is able to say 1—2 words, responds to its name, imitates familiar sounds and can follow simple instructions. This skill develops close to their second birthdays. Vocabulary typically grows from about 20 words at 18 months to around words at 21 months. Children's recorded monologues give insight into the development of the process of organizing information into meaningful units. By three years the child begins to use complex sentences, including relative clauses, although still perfecting various linguistic systems. For this, the child needs to learn to combine his perspective with that of others and with outside events and learn to use linguistic indicators to show he is doing this.

They also learn to adjust their language depending on to whom they are speaking. Although the role of adult discourse is important in facilitating the child's learning, there is considerable disagreement among theorists about the extent to which children's early meanings and expressive words arise. Findings about the initial mapping of new words, the ability to decontextualize words, and refine meaning of words are diverse. In this model, parental input has a critical role but the children ultimately rely on cognitive processing to establish subsequent use of words.

There is no single accepted theory of language acquisition. Instead, there are current theories that help to explain theories of language, theories of cognition, and theories of development. They include the generativist theory, social interactionist theory , usage-based theory Tomasello , connectionist theory, and behaviorist theory Skinner. Generativist theories refer to Universal Grammar being innate where language experience activates innate knowledge. This theory states that children acquire language because they want to communicate with others; this theory is heavily based on social-cognitive abilities that drive the language acquisition process.

Language Development across the Life Span: A Neuropsychological/Neuroimaging Perspective

Communication can be defined as the exchange and negotiation of information between two or more individuals through verbal and nonverbal symbols, oral and written or visual modes, and the production and comprehension processes of communication. All questions in a conversation should be answered, comments should be understood or acknowledged and any form of direction should, in theory, be followed. In the case of young, undeveloped children, these conversations are expected to be basic or redundant.

These four components of communication competence include: Language development is viewed as a motive to communication, and the communicative function of language in-turn provides the motive for language development. As they begin to acquire more language, body movements take on a different role and begin to complement the verbal message.

This gesture includes communicative pointing where an infant points to request something, or to point to provide information. Language acquisition and development contribute to the verbal form of communication. Children originate with a linguistic system where words they learn, are the words used for functional meaning.

According to this, children view words as a means of social construction, and that words are used to connect the understanding of communicative intentions of the speaker who speaks a new word. Another function of communication through language is pragmatic development. Mechanics of verbal interaction include taking turns, initiating topics, repairing miscommunication, and responding to lengthen or sustain dialogue. This shift in balance of conversation suggests a narrative discourse development in communication.

Delays in language is the most frequent type of developmental delay. According to demographics 1 out of 5 children will learn to talk or use words later than other children their age. Some children will also display behavioral problems due to their frustration of not being able to express what they want or need. Simple speech delays are usually temporary. Most cases are solved on their own or with a little extra attribution from the family.

In certain circumstances, parents will have to seek professional help, such as a speech therapist. It is important to take into considerations that sometimes delays can be a warning sign of more serious conditions that could include auditory processing disorders , hearing loss , developmental verbal dyspraxia , developmental delay in other areas, or even an autism spectrum disorder ASD. There are many environmental causes that are linked to language delays and they include situations such as, the child is having their full attention on other skills, such as walking perfectly, rather than on language.

Another circumstance could be a child that is in a daycare that provides few adults to be able to administer individual attention. Perhaps the most obvious component would be a child that suffers from psychosocial deprivation such as poverty, malnutrition, poor housing, neglect, inadequate linguistic stimulation, or emotional stress.

Language delay can be caused by a substantial amount of underlying disorders, such as intellectual disability. Intellectual disability takes part for more than 50 percent of language delays. Language delay is usually more rigorous than other developmental delays in intellectually disabled children, and it is usually the first obvious symptom of intellectual disability. Intellectual disability accounts to global language delay, including delayed auditory comprehension and use of gestures.

Impaired hearing is one of the most common causes of language delay. A child who can not hear or process speech in a clear and consistent manner will have a language delay. Even the most minimum hearing impairment or auditory processing deficit can considerably affect language development.

Language Development across the Life Span: A Neuropsychological/Neuroimaging Perspective

Essentially, the more the severe the impairment, the more serious the language delay. Nevertheless, deaf children that are born to families who use sign language develop infant babble and use a fully expressive sign language at the same pace as hearing children. Developmental Dyslexia is a developmental reading disorder that occurs when the brain does not properly recognize and process the graphic symbols chosen by society to represent the sounds of speech.

Children with dyslexia may encounter problems in rhyming and separating sounds that compose words. These abilities are essential in learning to read. Early reading skills rely heavily on word recognition. When using an alphabet writing system this involves in having the ability to separate out the sounds in words and be able to match them with letter and groups of letters.

Because they have trouble in connecting sounds of language to the letter of words, this may result difficulty in understanding sentences. They have confusion in mistaking letters such as "b" and "d". For the most part, symptoms of dyslexia may include, difficulty in determining the meaning of a simple sentence, learning to recognize written words, and difficulty in rhyming. Autism and speech delay are usually correlated. Problems with verbal language are the most common signs seen in autism. Early diagnosis and treatment of autism can significantly help the child improve their speech skills.

Autism is recognized as one of the five pervasive developmental disorders, distinguished by problems with language, speech, communication and social skills that present in early childhood. Some common autistic syndromes are the following, being limited to no verbal speech, echolalia or repeating words out of context, problems responding to verbal instruction and may ignore others who speak directly.

Malnutrition, maternal depression and maternal substance abuse are three of these factors which have received particular attention by researchers, however, many more factors have been considered. Although there are a large number of studies contemplating the effect of maternal depression and postnatal depression of various areas of infant development, they are yet to come to a consensus regarding the true effects. There are numerous studies indicating impaired development, and equally, there are many proclaiming no effect of depression on development. However, the authors conclude that it may be that short term depression has no effect, where as long term depression could cause more serious problems.

A further longitudinal study spanning 7 years again indicate no effect of maternal depression on cognitive development as a whole, however it found a gender difference in that boys are more susceptible to cognitive developmental issues when their mothers suffer depression. Infants with chronically depressed mothers showed significantly lower scores on the motor and mental scales within the Bayley Scales of Infant Development, [85] contrasting with many older studies.

The use of cocaine by pregnant women is not the only drug that can have a negative effect on the fetus. Smoking tobacco increases pregnancy complications including low birth rate, prematurity, placental abruption, and intrauterine death. It can also cause disturbed maternal-infant interaction; reduced IQ, ADHD, and it can especially cause tobacco use in the child. Parental marijuana exposure may have long-term emotional and behavioral consequences.

A ten-year-old child who had been exposed to the drug during pregnancy reported more depressive symptoms than fetuses unexposed. Some short-term effects include executive function impairment, reading difficulty, and delayed state regulation. An opiate drug, such as heroin, decreases birth weight, birth length, and head circumference when exposed to the fetus.

Children suffering malnutrition in Colombia weighed less than those living in upper class conditions at the age of 36 months The effect of low iron levels on cognitive development and IQ is a subject still to reach consensus. Socioeconomic status is measured primarily based on the factors of income, educational attainment and occupation.

Children in families who experience persistent financial hardships and poverty have significantly impaired cognitive abilities compared to those in families who do not face this issue. Mother's employment is associated with slightly lower test scores, regardless of socioeconomic status.

However, those whose working mother is of a higher socioeconomic status experience more disadvantages because they are being removed from a more enriching environment than a child care. Obviously, the quality of child care is a factor to be considered. Low income children tend to be cared for by grandparents or extended family [] and therefore form strong bonds with family. High income children tend to be cared for in a child care setting or in home care such as a nanny. If the mother is highly educated, this can be a disadvantage to the child. Even with quality of care controlled for, studies still found a negative correlation between full-time work within the first year and child development.

Effects are felt more strongly when women resume full-time work within the first year of the child's life. Low-income families are less likely to provide a stimulating home learning environment to their children due to time constraints and financial stress. Upper-income families are able to afford learning opportunities inside and outside of the classroom.

Diarrhea caused by the parasitic disease Giardiasis is associated with lower IQ. Harboring of this parasite could adverse several health implications in children affecting childhood development and morbidity. Reducing the prevalence of the parasite can be a benefit in child growth, development, and educational outcome. High levels of lead in the blood is associated with attention deficits, [] while arsenic poisoning has a negative effect on verbal and full Intelligence Quotient IQ.

Organophosphates have been specifically linked to poorer working memory , verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning and processing speed. A major problem in childhood is obesity. In America, the number of obese children is rapidly increasing. Childhood obesity is caused by a variety of factors. The main causes of childhood obesity are "lifestyle issues-too little activity and too many calories.

In order for a child to develop successfully, he or she must grow up in a positive environment with good health and academics. If a child becomes obese, there will be consequences such as: These issues of childhood obesity can be slowed, if society focuses on the causes. If parents enforce a healthy lifestyle at home with physical activity and proper dieting, many issues with obesity could be avoided.

Cognitive development is related to childhood exposure to violence and trauma, including spousal abuse between the parents and sexual abuse. When a child is unable to meet their developmental goals, because they have not been provided with the correct amount of care, stimulation or nutrition this situation is commonly referred to as child neglect. It is the most widespread form of child abuse.

Scientific Studies show that exposure to child neglect can have lifelong consequences for children. Assessing and identifying neglect pose a number of challenges for practitioners. Given that neglect is a dynamic between the child's development and levels of nurturance, the question in identifying neglect, becomes one of where do you start, with the child's development or with the levels of nurturance? Some professionals identify neglect by measuring the developmental levels of a child, for if those developmental levels are normal, one can, by definition, conclude that a child is not being neglected.

All these features go up to make a medical assessment of whether a child is thriving, so that a professional looking to start an assessment of neglect, might reasonably start with information collected by a doctor. Infants are often weighed and measured when seen by their physicians for well-baby check-ups. The physician initiates a more complete evaluation when the infant's development and functioning are found to be delayed. What this suggests is that social work staff could consult medical notes to establish if the baby or child is failing to thrive, as a first step in a pathway towards identifying neglect.

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If developmental levels are subnormal, then the identification of neglect then requires the professional establish if those subnormal levels of development can be put down to the level of nurturance experienced by the child. One needs to discount that the developmental delay was caused by some genetic condition or disease, which do not have their basis in a lack of nurturance. Another way of starting a process for identifying neglect is to identify if the child in question is experiencing a level of nurturance lower than that considered necessary to support normal development.

Furthermore, ascertaining whether a child is getting the requisite level of nurturance needs to take into account not just the intensity of the nurturance, but also, given that the intensity of certain forms of nurturance can vary across time, the duration and frequency of the nurturance. It is acceptable for a child to experience varying and low levels of certain types of nurturance across a day and from time to time, however, the levels of nurturance should never cross thresholds of intensity, duration and frequency. For this reason, professionals are minded to keep detailed histories of care provision, which demonstrate the duration to which the child is exposed to periods of subnormal exposure to care, stimulation, and nutrition.

It is most common for guidance to suggest professionals should focus on the levels of nurturance provided by the carers of the child, where neglect is understood as an issue of the parents' behaviour towards the child. This raises the question about what level of nurturance, a carer or parent needs to fall under, to provoke developmental delay, and how one goes about measuring that accurately. The method, which focuses on the stimulation provided by the carer, can be subject to critique.

Neglect may be occurring at school, outside of parental care. The child may be receiving nurturance from siblings or through a boarding school education, which compensates for the lack of nurturance provided by the parents. Functional and structural MRI studies have shown that one of the most important aspects of maturation across the cerebral cortex after age 5 is the overall decrease in gray matter GM volume and the continuous increase in the volume of white matter WM [ 61 ]. The development of GM follows an inverted U pattern, with initial growth followed by a continuous decrease [ 62 , 63 ].

The age at which this decrease in GM begins varies across the cerebral cortex; for example, the frontal system reaches its GM peak between the ages of 12—14 years, while in the temporal lobe this occurs around age , and in the parietal at 10—12 years. In contrast, the total volume of WM increases continuously see Figure 2.

They found that the increase of WM is much more prominent than the decrease in GM, results which revealed that the most significant changes were in the body of the corpus callosum related to the integration of sensory and motor cortical information and the right superior region of the corona radiata fibers projecting to and from the entire cerebral cortex, particularly the motor cortices. Findings from imaging studies suggest that age-related WM changes continue beyond early childhood. Myelinated fibers are the presumed substrate for greater brain connectivity, for acquiring new abilities, and for increases in learning [ 46 , 64 ].

The volume of most brain tracts using diffusion tensor tractography shows a significant increase between childhood and adolescence, with volume increases still being evident in several association cortex tracks during the postadolescent years [ 65 ]. Furthermore, gender differences in the maturation rate of both gray and white matter have been reported, with boys showing a faster rate of change than girls [ 62 ]. In addition to general changes in brain volume and gray matter, increments and decrements in the activation of specific brain regions have also been associated with language development.

For example, Brown et al. They used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify those brain regions that revealed statistically reliable, age-related effects. These brain regions were divided according to whether adults or children showed greater activity. The areas marked by developmental decreases were distributed bilaterally and were evident most prominently in the medial-frontal and anterior cingulate cortex, the right frontal cortex, the medial-parietal and posterior cingulate cortex, and the bilateral occipitoparietal cortex.

Most of the regions that showed significant developmental increases were in the left lateral and medial dorsal frontal cortex and the left parietal cortex, including the supramarginal gyrus.

Principles and Practice of Lifespan Developmental Neuropsychology

The brain regions that expanded and those that contracted showed signs of becoming adult-like at different ages. In summary, performance on word generation tasks appears to be related to increases in the activation of the left frontal and parietal cortex that reaches a peak around age 13 and to maturational decreases in other brain regions that achieve an adult-like condition between the ages of 13 and 16 years. They obtained fMRI data annually for a period of 5 years using a verbal generation task paradigm.

These authors suggest that the development of language representation in the brain reflects qualitative rather than simply quantitative changes and concluded that their results provide evidence of the increased neuroplasticity of language in this age group. This index refers to the difference between the number of activated pixels in the left L and right R hemispheres divided by the total number of activated pixels.

Analyses of the lateralization of different functions have shown that one of the cognitive functions with the highest lateralization indexes in the left hemisphere is language. Though a certain degree of functional lateralization has been observed in the human brain from birth, the assumption that lateralization increases with age means that the lateralization index can be used as a measure of brain maturation e.

The increased lateralization of language in the left hemisphere as age advances has been correlated with the growth of the corpus callosum, which connects the associative cortex of the two cerebral hemispheres and expands significantly from 2 to 15 years of age [ 70 ]. The anterior regions of the corpus callosum mature first at 3—6 years , followed by growth in the posterior ones isthmus and splenium as shown in [ 71 ]. Using time series of three-dimensional magnetic resonance imaging scans, Westerhausen and colleagues [ 72 ] showed that children aged 6—8 years whose callosal isthmus increased in thickness over the course of 2 years showed a decrease in interhemispheric information transfer, whereas children who exhibited a decrease in isthmus thickness showed an increase in information transfer.

These findings support the notion of a relation between the structural and functional development of the corpus callosum. Moreover, the authors suggest that the refinement of the connections of this commissure that occur after age 6 optimize neural communication between the two cerebral hemispheres. In the same way that language production and comprehension can reveal brain development in the early stages of human life, language abilities continue to reflect cerebral changes throughout adulthood and into senescence.

Although verbal abilities are relatively less sensitive to the aging effect compared to nonverbal skills, some age effects on the latter are still observable. According to the normalization data of the WAIS-III [ 75 ], vocabulary subtest scores increase up to the age of 45—54 years, but a decline is observed after that. More recently, Verhaegen and Poncelet [ 76 ] found that subtle naming difficulties, reflected by an increase in naming latencies, appear in individuals as young as those still in their 50s.

Interestingly, lateralization of language seemingly presents some changes during senescence, as greater activation of the right hemisphere during language comprehension and production tasks has been reported among elderly subjects. This observation suggests that the degree of language lateralization decreases after a certain age, while cognitive processes become more symmetrically represented over time [ 77 ]. They found that language lateralization towards the left hemisphere increases between the ages of 5 and 20 years, levels off between 20 and 25, and slowly declines from 25 to Recent research describes highly dynamic and plastic cerebral and cognitive systems during aging.

Studies using functional neuroimaging have shown that the brains of older adults respond to the cognitive changes characteristic of aging through anatomical and physiological modifications. Cabeza and colleagues [ 79 ] have suggested that during cognitive task performance a reorganization of brain activation patterns occurs that is age related. Two activation patterns distinguish older adults from younger ones, as those authors show 1 bilateral activation of the prefrontal lobes in cognitive tasks that in younger adults is lateralized to one hemisphere and 2 a reduction in occipital-temporal activation with increased activation of the frontal areas.

These functional brain changes have been unified in models of reduced brain asymmetry in aging, or HAROLD hemispheric asymmetry reduction in older adults [ 80 ], and changes in posterior to anterior activation, or PASA [ 81 ]. The decrease in posterior activation and increase in anterior activation in older brains have been interpreted as part of a compensatory strategy by the frontal lobes [ 82 ].

It should be pointed out that decreased asymmetry is observed not only in the neocortex but also in other brain areas, including the hippocampus. Maguire and Frith [ 83 ] selected 12 young 23—39 years old and 12 older subjects 67—80 and asked them to retrieve real-life autobiographical event memories accrued over decades.


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Several commonalities were observed between the younger and older groups in terms of the network of brain areas activated during retrieval. However, while left hippocampal activation was apparent in the younger group, bilateral hippocampal activation was manifested in the older adults. Direct comparisons of the two groups confirmed significantly greater right hippocampal activation in those older adults.

It has often been assumed that word retrieval difficulties are found commonly in older adults; indeed, several studies have reported evidence supporting an age-related decline in lexical retrieval ability e. However, other research has failed to find evidence of such an age-associated lexical retrieval defect e. We can conjecture, therefore, that there may be some variability in the decline in lexical retrieval or perhaps that the different experimental approaches using distinct tasks with a variety of study population account for some of the variation in results.

Kent and Luszcz [ 89 ], for example, studied an initial sample of people with an average age of 76 range 65—93 who underwent an initial examination and a follow-up evaluation 2 years later. Finally, a subsample of subjects was reevaluated 6 years after that. Results indicated that age and educational level, but not gender, affected naming ability. The authors concluded that there was a continuous decline in naming ability that correlated inversely with age.

Such findings have been observed in both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. Interestingly, in a year longitudinal study, Connor et al. They found that mean BNT scores decreased but the standard deviation increased with each succeeding decade of age. The size of the decline in mean BNT scores also increased with successive age decades; that is, there was an accelerating rate of decline associated with age see Figure 3. It is important to emphasize that during normal aging a decrease in mean naming scores is observed, coupled with an increase in the standard deviations of the scores, a finding pointed out previously by Ardila [ 74 ], who suggests that as age advances people become more and more heterogeneous in terms of cognition.

The observed decrease in cognitive test scores and the increase in variability with aging were also reported by Weintraub et al. The majority of the population falls somewhere between these two extremes. It is noteworthy that, when studying language in general and naming ability in particular, most researchers have focused primarily on children and the elderly, frequently leaving a gap that spans adolescence and early adulthood.

Based on their review, they concluded that there was a continuous decline in naming abilities that correlated inversely with age, since the results of the cross-sectional studies and the longitudinal analysis were similar. As observed in younger individuals, older participants across age groups also tend to perform better on semantic fluency tasks than phonemic fluency tasks. It is assumed that during a semantic fluency task there is an activation of an entire semantic category that leads to automatic retrieval of semantically related words.

The differences in performance between these two tests semantic versus phonemic fluency might be explained by the hierarchical organization of the two categories phonemic versus semantic , since retrieval by letter requires exploring more subsets of categories than does retrieval of a set like animal names, for example [ 43 ]. Moreover, performance on semantic category tasks tends to be better because the task itself provides a structure that the phonemic fluency task does not [ 94 ]. Phonological fluency requires processing the phonemic characteristics of words according to a given rule i.

Semantic fluency is believed to be more automatic, as it relies on common rules of categorization, whereas phonemic tasks rely on higher-order cognitive functions. Indeed, retrieval by letter appears to require exploring more subsets of words than retrieval of examples from a given semantic category [ 59 ]. Table 5 presents verbal fluency scores by age group according to different authors from studies of adult populations. The patterns of brain activation observed during performance of CN tests have also been analyzed using structural MRI and diffusion tensor imaging DTI data, and reports indicate that the volumes of the left mid-frontal gyrus and right middle temporal gyrus correlate with accuracy on the Action Naming Test which requires naming actions, not figures [ 96 ], while the volumes of the left mid-frontal gyrus and left planum temporale were seen to be negatively correlated with reaction times for correct trials on the BNT i.

Also, subjects with greater white matter density tended to achieve greater accuracy and faster reaction times. Better naming abilities were associated with the use of the bilateral perisylvian and dorsolateral frontal areas of both hemispheres. The authors of this study suggested that the older adults with relatively better naming ability may be relying on right-hemisphere perisylvian and mid-frontal regions and pathways in conjunction with left-hemisphere perisylvian and mid-frontal regions to achieve better test performance.

Several studies have found that the areas of significant activation are the left prefrontal cortex, including the middle frontal gyrus [ 97 , 98 ], and the right cerebellum, while areas of decreased activation are reported bilaterally in the mesial and dorsolateral parietal cortex [ 97 ]. Activation of regions of the prefrontal cortex is consistent with the demands on executive functioning involved in task performance.

Using a covert verbal fluency task, Amunts et al. Different studies report slight variations in the areas of activation, which can be accounted for by variations in how the methods are applied and by individual differences in cognitive strategies. With regard to semantic fluency tests, Meinzer et al. The pattern of activity during the phonemic fluency task was very similar, though a larger network of brain regions appeared to be activated and peak activity in several regions was more pronounced. In particular, a large anterior cluster was activated in the left hemisphere that included the left superior temporal gyrus and the inferior frontal gyrus.

Also, the superior frontal gyrus, the cuneate gyrus, and the caudate nucleus were activated. In CN tasks, increased activation has been observed in the left inferior temporal gyrus Brodmann areas 19 and 37 and bilaterally in the middle and inferior occipital gyri Brodmann areas 19 and 18 , regions that form part of the occipitotemporal ventral pathway involved in object recognition and the semantic processing of visual information [ 98 ]. They recruited 18 healthy, right-handed participants 14 men, 4 women for their study.

Verbal fluency was associated with activation in the middle frontal gyrus Brodmann areas 46 and 9 , the anterior cingulate gyrus, and the inferior frontal gyrus areas 44 and 45 , whereas confrontation naming activated areas of the temporal-occipital cortices areas 18, 19, and 37 and the inferior frontal gyrus. The authors concluded that these two paradigms successfully activated the regions involved in executive frontal lobe areas associated with the verbal fluency task and word retrieval processes temporal-occipital areas in the left hemisphere.

Figures 4 , 5 , and 6 present some examples of fMRI activation during different language tasks. Briefly, normal adults present greater activation in the left inferior frontal and lateral temporal cortex during both VF and CN. As mentioned above, bilateral activation has been reported in children, but adolescents aged 13 manifest activation of the left hemisphere similar to that of adults when performing VF tasks [ 58 ]. It is worth noting that this is the age around 13 years at which the most significant improvement in performance on VF tasks is usually seen [ 57 ]. Regardless of the diversity of functions of Brodmann area 44 [ ] see http: Damage in Brodmann area 44 and in the anterior insula has been associated with speech apraxia [ , ], whereas pathologies of Brodmann area 45 have been related to extrasylvian transcortical motor aphasia [ ].

Taken together, all these neuroimaging studies contribute to a better understanding of the neurological bases of language development across the life span [ ], particularly the development of word recall as measured by verbal fluency and confrontation naming tasks.

Child development

Table 6 presents the main findings of these studies. As this literature review suggests, age constitutes the essential variable of language changes across the life span and correlates with modifications in brain activation during performance of language tasks. There are, however, other variables that may modulate age effects, among which we can mention gender, level of education, socioeconomic status, and bilingualism. Gender differences in language abilities have been widely analyzed in the psychological and neuropsychological literature, with frequent statements that women achieve higher performance on several verbal tests e.