Genetic and environmental vulnerabilities in children with neurodevelopmental disorders

Authors

Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Birkbeck, University of London
Dean D'Souza, Birkbeck, University of London
Tessa M. Dekker, Birkbeck, University of London
Jo Van Herwegen, Kingston University
Fei Xu, University of California, Berkeley
Maja Rodic, Birkbeck, University of London
Daniel Ansari, Western UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-16-2012

Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

Volume

109

Issue

SUPPL.2

First Page

17261

Last Page

17265

URL with Digital Object Identifier

10.1073/pnas.1121087109

Abstract

One might expect that children with varying genetic mutations or children raised in low socioeconomic status environments would display different deficits. Although this expectation may hold for phenotypic outcomes in older children and adults, cross-syndrome comparisons in infancy reveal many common neural and sociocognitive deficits. The challenge is to track dynamic trajectories over developmental time rather than focus on end states like in adult neuropsychological studies. We contrast the developmental and adult approaches with examples from the cognitive and social domains, and we conclude that static models of adult brain lesions cannot be used to account for the dynamics of change in genetic and environmentally induced disorders in children.