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Educating the Human Brain is the product of a quarter century of research. This book provides an empirical account of the early development of attention and self regulation in infants and young children. It examines the brain areas involved in regulatory networks, their connectivity, and how their development is influenced by genes and experience. Relying on the latest techniques in cognitive and temperament measurement, neuroimaging, and molecular genetics, the book integrates research on neural networks common to all of us with studies of individual differences.

In this book, the authors explain where, when, and how the brain performs functions that are necessary for learning. Such functions include attending to information; controlling attention through effort; regulating the interplay of emotion with cognition; and coding, organizing, and retrieving information. The authors suggest how these aspects of brain development can support school readiness, literacy, numeracy, and expertise. The audience for this book includes neuroscientists as well as developmental and educational psychologists who have interest in the latest brain research. The many helpful visuals -- including brain diagrams, pictures and photographs of experimental set-ups, and graphs and tables displaying key data -- also give this book appeal for graduate students.

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CHOICE Review

Posner and Rothbart (both, psychology, Univ. of Oregon) provide an excellent description of human brain development in relation to attention and high-level cognitive skills thought to be related to school performance. The authors summarize traditional research and more recent neuron-imaging approaches used to determine the brain networks involved in tasks such as reading, writing, and arithmetic. They argue that although genes are responsible for the similarities of neural networks among people, genes, temperament, and environmental influences are responsible for individual differences in the efficiency of operation of these networks. Activity in specific neural networks can be improved with experience, so specific training can increase a child's readiness for school. For example, basic brain areas involved in comparing quantity of numbers can be facilitated by training in the use of quantity, leading to improvement in number skills. Similarly, brain areas important for reading can be facilitated with phonics or visual word form training. Filled with interesting ideas, this volume presupposes a reader familiar with core concepts. The writing is dense, and the authors include only a few figures to illustrate the material. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, and faculty. C. R. Timmons Drew University

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Michael I. Posner, PhD , is currently professor emeritus at the University of Oregon, Eugene, and adjunct professor of psychology in psychiatry at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, where he served as founding director of the Sackler Institute. Dr. Posner is best known for his work with Marcus E. Raichle on imaging the human brain during cognitive tasks. He has worked on the anatomy, circuitry, development, and genetics of three attentional networks underlying maintaining alertness, orienting to sensory events, and voluntary control of thoughts and ideas. His methods for measuring these networks have been applied to a wide range of neurological, psychiatric, and developmental disorders. Since 1980, he has worked with Mary K. Rothbart to understand the interaction of specific experience and genes in the development and efficiency of attentional networks.

Mary K. Rothbart, PhD , is a distinguished professor emerita at the University of Oregon, Eugene. She studies temperament and emotional and social development, and for the last 25 years she has worked with Michael I. Posner studying the development of attention and its relation to temperamental effortful control. She coedited the book Temperament in Childhood and coauthored, with Holly Ruff, the book Attention in Early Development . She has also made contributions to the education and support of new parents through the Birth to Three organization in Eugene, Oregon. This year, the group honored her as a "Champion for Children."