Modern neuroimaging offers tremendous opportunities for gaining insights into normative development and a wide array of developmental neuropsychiatric disorders. Focusing on ontogeny, this text covers basic processes involved in both healthy and atypical maturation, and also addresses the range of neuroimaging techniques most widely used for studying children. This book will enable you to understand normative structural and functional brain maturation and the mechanisms underlying basic developmental processes; become familiar with current knowledge and hypotheses concerning the neural bases of developmental neuropsychiatric disorders; and learn about neuroimaging techniques, including their unique strengths and limitations. Coverage includes normal developmental processes, atypical processing in developmental neuropsychiatric disorders, ethical issues, neuroimaging techniques and their integration with psychopharmacologic and molecular genetic research approaches, and future directions. This comprehensive volume is an essential resource for neurologists, neuropsychologists, psychiatrists, pediatricians, and radiologists concerned with normal development and developmental neuropsychiatric disorders.

This book reviews the recent rapid development of functional neuroimaging techniques and their implications for child psychiatry. It is unique in that it focuses on children and integrates brain mapping with genetics and behavioral testing, an interface that is likely to become fundamental to functional neuroimaging. This invaluable reference will help clinicians and investigators to:

• Understand the mechanisms of childhood psychiatric disorders through imaging
• Decide the most appropriate technique for their purposes with respect to technology, experimental design, data analysis, and ethical considerations
• Appreciate the role of molecular genetics and neuropsychology in planning brain imaging studies. Set against an overview of normal behavioral and cognitive development, the text includes a description of new brain imaging strategies and the application of imaging techniques used on adults to children. Linking the latest findings from neuroimaging to neurophysiological models, this book is an essential resource for researchers and clinicians concerned with neurodevelopmental disorders.