Although myelination is believed to mirror behavioral development (Pujol et al. 2006), with the myelination of sub-serving brain networks occurring alongside the onset and refinement of behavioral and cognitive functions, the relationships between myelination and functional development remain poorly understood.
The findings highlight the complex nature of stimulant effects on human behavior and the utility of performance tasks as models of complex behavioral and cognitive functions.
The mammalian hippocampus, comprised of serially connected subfields, participates in diverse behavioral and cognitive functions.
Exposure to ethanol during critical stages of brain development and maturation has adverse effects on behavioral and cognitive functions.
However, our ability to extract a simple conceptual understanding from complex data is increasingly hampered by the lack of theoretically principled data analytic procedures, as well as theoretical frameworks for how circuit connectivity and dynamics can conspire to generate emergent behavioral and cognitive functions.
During this period neural migration, synapse generation, dendritic sprouting, axonal pruning, and the elaboration of the myelin sheath (myelination) shape, organize, and provide the neural architecture necessary for behavioral and cognitive functioning (Durston and Casey 2006).
Pharmacotherapy with methylphenidate (MPH) improves behavioral symptoms and cognitive function (e.g., attention, inhibition, working memory) in ADHD (5), producing similar effects in animals and healthy humans (6).
5-HT is a well-known neurotransmitter of the central nervous system and traditionally it is known to influence a range of behavioral, physiological, and cognitive functions.
ChAT activity is involved in many behavioral phenomena and cognitive functions, but it has been found slightly reduced only in the pre-frontal cortex of rat pups exposed in utero to PFOS, not in the hippocampus (Lau et al. 2003).
On a behavioral level, decreases in motor and cognitive function are hallmarks of normal aging [9].
