Studies of brain and cognitive maturation through childhood and adolescence: A strategy for testing neurodevelopmental hypotheses

Although neurodevelopmental models of schizophre-nia are now widely accepted, there is minimal direct human evidence of dysmaturation in schizophrenia to support this theory. This is especially the case regard-ing maturational changes during late childhood and adolescence, which immediately precede the typical age of onset of the disorder. By integrating new nonin-vasive methods of functional magnetic resonance imaging with techniques of developmental cognitive neuroscience, it is now possible to begin systematic research programs to directly test hypotheses of neu-rodevelopmental abnormalities in schizophrenia. In this article, we describe strategies for characterizing developmental changes taking place during the critical period of adolescence that can elucidate dysmatura-tion processes in schizophrenia. We emphasize the need for studies characterizing normal development before examining at-risk or clinical populations, and the potential value of using neurobehavioral and neu-roimaging approaches to directly characterize the dys-maturation associated with schizophrenia