Foreword for inaugural issue of Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Excerpt

In 1986, William Greenough and Janice Juraska edited a volume entitled Developmental Neuropsychobiology. This poly-syllabic title reflected a multi-disciplinary ambition. As they noted in the introduction, “A motivating force behind the organization of this book was our perception of the mutual isolation of the fields of developmental neuroscience and developmental psychobiology. Each has its separate societies, journals, and international meetings, and there is remarkably little overlap in membership and even less in attendance at meetings” [9]. This was probably not the first, and certainly not the last, well-intentioned assault on the barriers between various neurodevelopmental disciplines. Yet 23 years later we still lack a unified, integrated science of the development of brain and behavior. We have increasingly robust fields of developmental neuroscience, developmental psychobiology, developmental psychology and developmental psychopathology, but these remain silos with their own professional societies, training programs, and journals. This cultural balkanization is even manifested in the languages used to describe developmental processes: “epigenetics,” “imprinting,” and “stress” have different meanings in these closely related disciplines. Beyond the cultural separation, the lack of a unified science prevents insights in one field from informing others, leaving all of us with less understanding of development than might be possible by combining diverse approaches. …