63.050 Invited Paper Session - Developmental Neuroscience: Directions and Implications for Educational Research
Thursday, April 14, 4:05pm - 6:05pm
Le Centre Sheraton Montreal, Salle de Bal Est
Session Chair: George Hruby, Utah State University

	Lisa Freund - The neurobiology of social interaction and its affect on early learning. Dr. Freund is a developmental psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist who is known for her neuroimaging studies with children from different clinical populations and was an National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) supported scientist for several years. She has extensive training and experience in the fields of developmental neuroscience, developmental psychology, learning disorders, and behavioral and molecular genetics. Dr. Freund received her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in Applied Developmental Psychology and was previously an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Kennedy Krieger Institute. As part of the Child Development and Behavior Branch of the NICHD, Dr. Freund is responsible for a multifacted research and training program to promote investigations, both basic and applied, to gain a deeper understanding of the linkages between genes, developing brain, and behavior.
	Usha Goswami - Phonological awareness and reading: Can we use ERP to predict literacy? Usha Goswami is Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge. She is also Director of the Faculty’s new Centre for Neuroscience in Education, which will focus its initial research on how neuroscience can inform the teaching of literacy and mathematics. Her current research examines relations between phonology and reading. A major focus of the research is on dyslexic and deaf children’s reading. She has received the British Psychology Society Spearman Medal, the Norman Geschwind-Rodin Prize for Dyslexia research, and Fellowships from the National Academy of Education (USA) and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Germany). She advised on the National Curriculum and the National Literacy Project, and was one of the three UK members of the Managing Committee of the European Concerted Action on Learning Disorders as a Barrier to Human Development: Dyslexia (COST-A8). She is also part of the Literacy Network of the OECD Initiative on Learning Sciences and Brain Research.
	William Greenough - How brains acquire information in development and learning. Dr. Greenough is the Swanlund Professor of Psychology, Psychiatry and Cell and Structural Biology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His pioneering work in the 1970s and 1980s helped change our perception of the adult brain as an anatomically static structure and recognize the dynamic influences of development and environment. "It is fair to say that he deserves the major credit for establishing the current view of dynamic, life-long synapse formation in the mammalian brain" (APS). Dr. Greenough has also investigated the neurological foundations of the fragile X mental retardation syndrome. His current research involves the mechanisms that mediate the synaptic changes caused by neural activity and non-neuronal physiological responses to learning.
	Elizabeth Spelke - Core knowledge and conceptual change: number and arithmetic. Dr. Spelke is a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and Co-Director of the Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative. Dr. Spelke is renowned for her work on perceptual and cognitive development, particularly infants' representations of hidden objects, infants' reasoning about inanimate object motion and human action, and children's understanding of number and geometry. Her honors include the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award (APA), the William James Fellow Award (APS), and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
	Discussant: John Geake (Paper.pdf) Dr. Geake is Professor of Education at the Westminster Institute of Education, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK. His post includes leading the Institute’s research developments in gifted education, and the implications of cognitive neuroscience for education. In 2001 he co-founded the Oxford Cognitive Neuroscience – Education Forum under the auspices of the McDonell-Pew Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Physiology, University of Oxford. Dr. Geake conducts neuroscientific research into high intelligence and creativity at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain, Department of Neurology, John Radcliffe Hospital.