Dynamism of Excitation and Its EEG Correlates in Children

Abstract

Study of the properties of the nervous system in children is important if one is exploring the genetic approach to the study of higher nervous activity in man, since it has, as its goal, identification of the underlying mechanisms which relate to two problems: (1) the actual functioning of the nervous system during development and (2) those factors underlying individual differences in such functioning. The ontogenetic approach to the neurological factors underlying individual differences will eventually allow us to attack such additional problems as the relative roles of heredity and environment in the development of individual psychological differences—the factors underlying this or that deficit in psychophysiological organization, the techniques by which various aspects of this organization can be directly influenced to compensate for these deficits and to develop an adequate level of functioning, i.e., to make it optimal, taking into account the fact that the child’s nervous system is undoubtedly much more plastic than the already morphologically and functionally developed adult nervous system.

This chapter was written with the collaboration of K. Voiku and includes most of the material of his doctoral thesis (Voiku, 1964), which was completed under our supervision.