What are the brain mechanisms that support high level thinking and how do they develop? We have examined the anatomy, circuitry and development of a number of networks that together constitute the brain's attentional system. A network involving the parietal lobe, pulvinar and colliculus serves to orient attention to sensory input. Frontal areas are involved in monitoring and resolving conflict. To examine these networks we have used a combination of hemodynamic (neuroimaging) methods to trace the anatomical areas involved and high density electrical recording to indicate the time course of these activations.

A major issue for neuroscience is the plasticity of these high level networks. We have examined the role of attention and practice in influencing the organization of networks involved in reading. We showed how these networks are disorganized by insults to the brain in closed head injury. We are currently examining how attentional networks change during early childhood and how those changes influence the cognitive and emotional life of the child. We are studying children with a genetic variant related to attention deficit disorder, those who have the disorder but not the candidate allele and normal children.

An area at the occipital temporal boundary is involved in chunking letters into units. This brain area responds to meaningful words and to nonsense strings of letters that could be acceptable English words but have no meaning. However, it is not active for consonant strings. This area appears to undergo a developmental process during the acquisition of literacy. We have started to trace changes that occur with acquisition of literacy and are designing interventions to influence these changes. We are giving children attention training to examine its influence on emotions and learning of reading and number processing.