How we raise young children is one of today's most highly personalized and sharply politicized issues, in part because each of us can claim some level of "expertise." The debate has intensified as discoveries about our development-in the womb and in the first months and years-have reached the popular media. How can we use our burgeoning knowledge to assure the well-being of all young children, for their own sake as well as for the sake of our nation? Drawing from new findings, this book presents important conclusions about nature-versus-nurture, the impact of being born into a working family, the effect of politics on programs for children, the costs and benefits of intervention, and other issues. The committee issues a series of challenges to decision makers regarding the quality of child care, issues of racial and ethnic diversity, the integration of children's cognitive and emotional development, and more. Authoritative yet accessible, From Neurons to Neighborhoods presents the evidence about "brain wiring" and how kids learn to speak, think, and regulate their behavior. It examines the effect of the climate-family, child care, community-within which the child grows.

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From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development

I Genesis, God blesses human beings and bids us to take dominion over the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, and every other living thing. We are entreated to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth, and subdue it (Gen. 1:28). The bad news, and the good news, is that we have almost succeeded. There is little debate in scientific circles about the importance of human influence on ecosystems. According to scientists’ reports, we appropriate over 40% of the net primary productivity (the green material) produced on Earth each year (Vitousek et al. 1986, Rojstaczer et al. 2001). We consume 35% of the productivity of the oceanic shelf (Pauly and Christensen 1995), and we use 60% of freshwater run-off (Postel et al. 1996). The unprecedented escalation in both human population and consumption in the 20th century has resulted in environmental crises never before encountered in the history of humankind and the world (McNeill 2000). E. O. Wilson (2002) claims it would now take four Earths to meet the consumption demands of the current human population, if every human consumed at the level of the average US inhabitant. The influence of human beings on the planet has become so pervasive that it is hard to find adults in any country who have not seen the environment around them reduced in natural values during their lifetimes—woodlots converted to agriculture, agricultural lands converted to suburban development, suburban development converted to urban areas. The cumulative effect of these many local changes is the global phenomenon of human influence on nature, a new geological epoch some call the “anthropocene” (Steffen and Tyson 2001). Human influence is arguably the most important factor affecting life of all kinds in today’s world (Lande 1998, Terborgh 1999, Pimm 2001, UNEP 2001). Yet despite the broad consensus among biologists about the importance of human influence on nature, this phenomenon and its implications are not fully appreciated by the larger human community, which does not recognize them in its economic systems (Hall et al. 2001) or in most of its political decisions (Soulé and Terborgh 1999, Chapin et al. 2000). In part, this lack of appreciation may be due to scientists’ propensity to express themselves in terms like “appropriation of net primary productivity” or “exponential population growth,” abstractions that require some training to understand. It may be due to historical assumptions about and habits inherited from times when human beings, as a group, had dramatically less influence on the biosphere. Now the individual deci-

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The Human Footprint and the Last of the Wild

The field of conservation policy must adopt state-of-the-art program evaluation methods to determine what works, and when, if we are to stem the global decline of biodiversity and improve the effectiveness of conservation investments.

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Money for nothing? A call for empirical evaluation of biodiversity conservation investments.

The dopamine-containing projection from the ventral tegmental area of the midbrain to the nucleus accumbens is critically involved in mediating the reinforcing properties of cocaine. Although neurons in this area respond to rewards on a subsecond timescale, neurochemical studies have only addressed the role of dopamine in drug addiction by examining changes in the tonic (minute-to-minute) levels of extracellular dopamine. To investigate the role of phasic (subsecond) dopamine signalling, we measured dopamine every 100 ms in the nucleus accumbens using electrochemical technology. Rapid changes in extracellular dopamine concentration were observed at key aspects of drug-taking behaviour in rats. Before lever presses for cocaine, there was an increase in dopamine that coincided with the initiation of drug-seeking behaviours. Notably, these behaviours could be reproduced by electrically evoking dopamine release on this timescale. After lever presses, there were further increases in dopamine concentration at the concurrent presentation of cocaine-related cues. These cues alone also elicited similar, rapid dopamine signalling, but only in animals where they had previously been paired to cocaine delivery. These findings reveal an unprecedented role for dopamine in the regulation of drug taking in real time.

https://faculty.washington.edu/pemp/pdfs/pemp2003-03.pdf

Subsecond dopamine release promotes cocaine seeking

Synchrony, a construct used across multiple fields to denote the temporal relationship between events, is applied to the study of parent-infant interactions and suggested as a model for intersubjectivity. Three types of timed relationships between the parent and child's affective behavior are assessed: concurrent, sequential, and organized in an ongoing patterned format, and the development of each is charted across the first year. Viewed as a formative experience for the maturation of the social brain, synchrony impacts the development of self-regulation, symbol use, and empathy across childhood and adolescence. Different patterns of synchrony with mother, father, and the family and across cultures describe relationship-specific modes of coordination. The capacity to engage in temporally-matched interactions is based on physiological mechanisms, in particular oscillator systems, such as the biological clock and cardiac pacemaker, and attachment-related hormones, such as oxytocin. Specific patterns of synchrony are described in a range of child-, parent- and context-related risk conditions, pointing to its ecological relevance and usefulness for the study of developmental psychopathology. A perspective that underscores the organization of discrete relational behaviors into emergent patterns and considers time a central parameter of emotion and communication systems may be useful to the study of interpersonal intimacy and its potential for personal transformation across the lifespan.

Parent-infant synchrony and the construction of shared timing; physiological precursors, developmental outcomes, and risk conditions.

Attachment theorists maintain that cultural differences are relatively minor, and they focus on universals. Here the authors highlight evidence of cultural variations and note ways in which attachment theory is laden with Western values and meaning. Comparisons of the United States and Japan highlight the cultural relativity of 3 core hypotheses of attachment theory: that caregiver sensitivity leads to secure attachment, that secure attachment leads to later social competence, and that children who are securely attached use the primary caregiver as a secure base for exploring the external world. Attachment theorists use measures of sensitivity, competence, and secure base that are biased toward Western ways of thinking: The measures emphasize the child's autonomy, individuation, and exploration. In Japan, sensitivity, competence, and secure base are viewed very differently, calling into question the universality of fundamental tenets of attachment theory. The authors call for an indigenous approach to the psychology of attachment.

http://cfw.tufts.edu/files/rothbaum_articles/attachment%20and%20culture%20%28AP,%202000%29.pdf?origin=publication_detail

Attachment and culture. Security in the United States and Japan.

Road density is closely linked to market accessibility, economic growth, natural resource exploitation, habitat fragmentation, deforestation, and the disappearance of wildlands and wildlife. Research in the Republic of Congo shows that roads established and maintained by logging concessions intensify bushmeat hunting by providing hunters greater access to relatively unexploited populations of forest wildlife and by lowering hunters' costs to transport bushmeat to market. Reconciling the contrary effects of roads on economic development and biodiversity conservation is one of the key challenges to wildlife managers in all nations. As the Democratic Republic of Congo prepares to reconstruct its almost completely collapsed road system, the government, donors, and conservation organizations have a unique opportunity to strategically prioritize investment in segments of the network that would maximize local and national economic benefits while minimizing adverse effects on forest wildlife.




Resumen: La densidad de carreteras esta estrechamente ligada al acceso a mercados, el crecimiento economico, la explotacion de recursos naturales, la fragmentacion del habitat, la deforestacion y la desaparicion de tierras y vida silvestre. Investigacion en la Republica del Congo muestra que las carreteras establecidas y mantenidas por las concesiones para tala de arboles intensifican la caceria al proveer a los cazadores un mayor acceso a poblaciones forestales de vida silvestre relativamente sin explotar y al disminuir el costo de transporte de la carne obtenida por la caza hacia el mercado. La reconciliacion de los efectos contrarios de las carreteras en el desarrollo economico y la conservacion de la biodiversidad es uno de los retos clave para los manejadores de vida silvestre en todas las naciones. A medida que la Republica Democratica del Congo se prepara para reconstruir su casi completamente colapsado sistema carretero, el gobierno, los donadores y las organizaciones no gubernamentales conservacionistas tienen una oportunidad unica para priorizar estrategicamente las inversiones en segmentos de la red carretera que podrian maximizar los beneficios economicos locales y nacionales al mismo tiempo que se minimicen los impactos adversos sobre la vida silvestre forestal.

Roads, Development, and Conservation in the Congo Basin

This study examines the decisions of middle-class U.S. and Highland Mayan parents regarding sleeping arrangements during their child's first 2 years and their explanations for their differing practices. All 14 Mayan children slept in their mothers' beds into toddlerhood. None of the 18 U.S. infants slept in bed with their mothers on a regular basis as newborns, although 15 slept near their mothers until age 3 to 6 months, when most were moved to a separate room. The Mayan parents explained their practices in terms of the value of closeness with infants; the U.S. parents explained their practices in terms of the value of independence for infants. The U.S. families, but not the Mayan families, used bedtime routines and objects to facilitate the transition to sleep.

http://anthro.vancouver.wsu.edu/media/Course_files/anth-302-barry-hewlett/morilli-cosleeping.pdf

Cultural Variation in Infants' Sleeping Arrangements: Questions of Independence

Parks and people: assessing the human welfare effects of establishing protected areas for biodiversity conservation.

Ethnographic literature indicates that in many cultural communities around the world, children have extensive opportunities to learn through observing and participating in their community's work and other mature activities. We argue that in communities in which children are often segregated from adult work (as in middle-class European American communities), young children instead are often involved in specialised child-focused activities such as lessons, adult--child play (and scholastic play), and conversation with adults on child-related topics. We examine this argument with systematic time-sampled observations of the extent of 2- to 3-year-old children's access to adult work compared to their involvement in specialised child-focused activities. Observations focused on 12 children in each of four communities: two middle-class European American communities (West Newton, Massachusetts and Sugarhouse, Utah), Efe foragers of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and indigenous Maya of San Pedro, Guatemala. West...

Gilda A. Morelli

Papers

Attachment and culture. Security in the United States and Japan.

Roads, Development, and Conservation in the Congo Basin

Cultural Variation in Infants' Sleeping Arrangements: Questions of Independence

Parks and people: assessing the human welfare effects of establishing protected areas for biodiversity conservation.

Cultural variation in young children’s access to work or involvement in specialised child-focused activities