Students will develop competence in the operation, interpretation, and evaluation of research on neural bases of altered cognitive, emotional and behavioral development. Laboratory activities will foster critical thinking skills about research and allow them to be effective consumers of research information; students interested in generating new knowledge themselves will develop the research skills required to do this. Main topics of lectures and laboratory activities will be: 1) Mental development and neural maturation: concepts and criteria; 2) prenatal life: proliferation, migration, specialization, and selection of neural cells; 3) early postnatal life: the critical stages of psychological development and brain maturation, synaptogenesis, connectivity and selection, the differentiation of specific brain areas and the development of specific cognitive functions, corticalization; 4) adolescence and early adulthood: maturational causes of a dangerous developmental stage, the roots of psychopathogenesis; 5) life-long plasticity of the brain and the changing mind: learning and memory; functional recovery, psychotherapy and cognitive rehabilitation.

A list of scientific papers available through Sapienza’s online library will be posted on prof. Cabib's website together with slides used for lectures before each series of lectures/lab-meetings.