HDP 3286: Developmental Neurobiology
Course Outline
Winter term, 2006 – Tuesday, 9:30-12:30
Marc D. Lewis mlewis@oise.utoronto.ca, http://home.oise.utoronto.ca/~mlewis/
Week 1 (Jan 10): Introduction to concepts, terms, and course objectives. Basics of functional
neuroanatomy. Connectivity and development.
Week 2 (Jan 17): Broad perspective on developing brain-behaviour relations. Cognitive and
emotional systems and their interaction. Neural plasticity and development.
Role of emotion in synaptic shaping.
-Rosenzweig, Breedlove, & Lieman, 2002, chapter 2
-Elbert, Heim, & Rockstroh, 2001
-Le Doux, 1996, chapters 3-5 (inclusive)
Week 3 (Jan24): Basic emotion systems in the brain. The anatomy, function, and connectivity
of the amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, striatum, hypothalamus, and brain stem.
Neuromodulator and neuropeptide systems.
-Devinsky & D’Esposito, 2004, chapter 10
-Panksepp, 1998, chapter 3 and 6
-Le Doux, 1996, chapter 6
QUIZ
Week 4 (Jan 31): Cognitive processes: attention, memory and learning; prefrontal cortex,
cingulate cortex, and hippocampus. Ventral vs. dorsal systems.
-Mesulam, 2002
-Gabriel et al., 2002
-Le Doux, 1996, chapter 7
Week 5 (Feb 7): Putting the pieces together. Emotional-cognitive interaction and competition.
Emotional constraints on perception, cognition, learning, memory, and action.
Vertical integration.
-Drevets & Raichle, 1998
-Le Doux, 1996, chapter 9 (chapter 8 can be skipped)
-Tucker, Derryberry, & Luu, 2000
Week 6 (Feb 14): Developmental mechanisms I – normative development: cognitive
development and emotional appraisals. ®
-Johnson, 1998
-Nelson, 2000
Week 7 (Feb 21): Developmental mechanisms II – individual development: plasticity, sculpting,
and kindling—learning processes that shape personality.
-Greenough & Black, 1992
-Kramer, 1993, chapter 5
-Lewis, 2005
Week 8 (Feb 28): Neurobiology of attachment: the interpersonal context of early emotional
development. Emphasis on the OFC and autonomic arousal.
-Schore, 2003, chapters 3-4
Week 9 (Mar 7): The growth of effortful attention and inhibition. Normative development and
temperamental differences in the preschool years. Emphasis on the ACC and
related systems. ®
-Derryberry & Rothbart, 1997
-Posner & Rothbart, 2000
**********March Break**********
Week 10 (Mar 21): Development of anxiety-related problems.
-Heim & Nemeroff, 2001
-Brewin, 2002
Paper proposal due.
Week 11 (Mar 28): Development of depression and related problems.
-Kaufman & Charney, 2003
-Harkness & Tucker, 2000
Week 12 (Apr 4): Development of aggression and antisocial problems. Self-monitoring and selfcontrol. ©
-TO BE DETERMINED
Week 13 (Apr 11): Adolescent brain development: implications for plasticity and personality
consolidation.
-Steinberg et al., 2004
-Spear, 2003
Assignments:
A one-page maximum (double-spaced) paper highlighting the key issues, from your perspective,
from each week’s readings. Please don’t attempt a summary, but focus on what you
consider to be most interesting or most important.
The overall quality and completeness of these papers will count toward 30% of the final grade.
Class participation will be considered when assigning final grades. Adequate participation will
break a tie in the positive direction (e.g., A-/A  A), inadequate participation will do
the opposite. You don’t have to say a lot, but please be prepared to share thoughts,
questions, extensions, or criticisms concerning the assigned readings for each class.
Paper proposal: maximum two pages double-spaced. This should be a “proposal” for your term
paper, setting out the value and rationale for the analysis you plan to do. My feedback
on this paper will help you to conceptualize your final paper.
Due date: March 21
No grade.
Term paper: maximum length 12 pages double-spaced. Compose an approach or model for
analyzing any issue in emotional development, broadly defined, through the
application of neurobiological concepts. This can simply be a theoretical paper,
showing how certain neurobiological mechanisms or processes (hypothesized or
confirmed) may underlie some developmental phenomenon. You may address
phenomena from personality development, developmental psychopathology, or
individual differences in cognitive development. Or, propose an experimental design
capable of testing neurobiological hypotheses concerning developmental outcomes.
The level of detail of your analysis is not as important as the clarity of your thinking
about the problem you’ve chosen.
Due date: April 21
Worth 70% of final grade.
References (required readings in bold):
Cardinal, R. N., Parkinson, J. A., Hall, J., & Everitt, B. J. (2002). Emotion and motivation: the
role of the amygdala, ventral striatum, and prefrontal cortex. Neuroscience and
Biobehavioral Reviews, 26, 321-352.
Derryberry, D. & Rothbart, M. K. (1997). Reactive and effortful processes in the
organization of temperament. Development and psychopathology, 9, 633-652.
Elbert, T., Heim, S., & Rockstroh, B. (2001). Neural plasticity and development. In C. A. Nelson
& M. Luciana (Eds.), Handbook of developmental cognitive neuroscience (pp. 191202). Cambridge, MA: Bradford/MIT.
Evans, D. W., Lewis, M. D., & Iobst, E., (2004). The role of the orbitofrontal cortex in normally
developing compulsive-like behaviors and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Brain and
Cognition, 55, 220-234.
Fox, N. A., Henderson, H. A., & Marshall, P. J. (2001). The biology of temperament: An
integrative approach. In C. A. Nelson & M. Luciana (Eds.), Handbook of
developmental cognitive neuroscience (pp. 631-645). Cambridge, MA: Bradford/MIT.
Gabriel, M., Burhans, L., Talk, A., & Scalf, P. (2002) Cingulate cortex. In V. S.
Ramachandran (Ed), Encyclopedia of the human brain, Vol. 1 (pp. 775-791). San
Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Greenough, W. T. and Black, J. E. (1992). Induction of brain structure by experience:
Substrates for cognitive development. In M. R. Gunnar & C. A. Nelson (Eds.),
Minnesota symposium on child psychology, Vol. 24: Developmental behavioral
neuroscience (pp.155-200). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Harkness, K. L. & Tucker, D. M. (2000). Motivation of neural plasticity: Neural
mechanisms in the self-organization of depression. In M. D. Lewis & I. Granic, I.
(Eds.), Emotion, development and self-organization: Dynamic systems approaches
to emotional development (pp. 186-208). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Heim, C. & Nemeroff, C. B. (2001). The role of childhood trauma in the neurobiology of
mood and anxiety disorders: Preclinical and clinical studies. Biological
Psychiatry, 49, 1023-1039.
Johnson, M. H. (1998). The neural basis of cognitive development. In W. Damon (Ed.),
Handbook of child psychology (pp. 1-49). New York: Wiley.
Kaufman, J. & Charney, D. (2003). The neurobiology of child and adolescent depression:
Current knowledge and future directions. In D. Cicchetti & E. F. Walker (Eds.),
Neurodevelopmental mechanisms in psychopathology (pp. XX-XX). Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press.
Kandel, E. R., Schwartz, J. H., & Jessell, T. M. (2000). Principles of neural science. New York:
McGraw-Hill.
Kramer, P. D. (1993). Listening to prozac. New York: Viking.
Le Doux, J. (1996). The emotional brain. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Lewis, M. D. (2005a). Bridging emotion theory and neurobiology through dynamic systems
modeling (target article). Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28, 169-194.
Lewis, M. D. (2005b, in press). Self-organizing individual differences in brain development.
Developmental Review.
Mesulam, M. (2002). The human frontal lobes: Transcending the default mode through
contingent encoding. In D. T. Stuss & R. T. Knight (Eds.), Principals of frontal
lobe function (pp. 8-30). New York: Oxford University Press.
Nelson, C. A. (2000). Neural plasticity and human development: The role of early
experience in sculpting memory systems. Developmental Science, 3, 115-136.
Nelson, C.A., Bloom, F. E., Cameron, J. L., Amaral, D., Dahl, R. E., Pine, D. (2002). An
integrative, multidisciplinary approach to the study of brain-behavior relations in the
context of typical and atypical development. Development and Psychopathology:
Special issue on multiple levels of analysis, 14, 499-520.
Nelson, C. A., & Luciana, M. (2001). Handbook of developmental cognitive neuroscience.
Cambridge, MA: Bradford/MIT.
Panksepp, J. (1998). Affective neuroscience: The foundations of human and animal
emotions. New York: Oxford University Press.
Paré, D., Collins, D. R., & Pelletier, J. G. (2002). Amygdala oscillations and the consolidation of
emotional memories. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 306-314.
Post, R. M., Leverich, G. S., Weis, S. R. B., Zhang L.-X., Xing, G., Li, H. & Smith, M. (2003).
Psychosocial stressors as predisposing factors to affective illness and PTSD: potential
neurobiological mechanisms and theoretical implications. In D. Cicchetti & E. F.
Walker (Eds.), Neurodevelopmental mechanisms in psychopathology (pp. XX-XX).
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Post, R. M. & Weiss, S. R. B. (1997). Emergent properties of neural systems: how focal
molecular neurobiological alterations can affect behavior. Development and
psychopathology, 9, 907-929.
Rosenzweig, M. R., Breedlove, S. M., & Leiman, A. L. (2002). Biological psychology: An
introduction to behavioral, cognitive and clinical neuroscience. Sunderland, MA:
Sinauer Associates, Inc.
Schore, A. N. (2003). Affect regulation and the repair of the self. New York: Norton.
Spear, L. P. (2000). Neurobehavioral changes during adolescence. Current Directions in
Psychological Science, 9, 111-114.
Spear, L. P. (2003). Neurodevelopment during adolescence. In D. Cicchetti & E. F. Walker
(Eds.), Neurodevelopmental mechanisms in psychopathology (pp. XX-XX).
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Steinberg, L., Dahl, R., Keating, D., Kupfer, D. J., Masten, A.S., & Pine, D. (2004). The
study of developmental psychopathology in adolescence: Integrating affective
neuroscience with the study of context. In D. Cicchetti (Ed.), Handbook of
developmental psychopathology. New York: Wiley.
Stiles, J. (2001). Neural plasticity and cognitive development. Developmental Neuropsychology,
18, 237-272.
Tucker, D. M., Derryberry, D., & Luu, P. (2000). Anatomy and physiology of human
emotion: Vertical integration of Brainstem, Limbic and Cortical systems. In J.
Borod (Ed.), Handbook of the neuropsychology of emotion (pp. 56-79). London:
Oxford University Press.