Nurturing Children and Families (Building on the Legacy of T. Berry Brazelton) || A Neurobiological Perspective on the Work of Berry Brazelton

✍ Scribed by Lester, Barry M.; Sparrow, Joshua D.

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2010
• Weight: 498 KB
• Category: Article
• ISBN: 1405196009
• DOI: 10.1002/9781444324617.ch13

✦ Synopsis

The current intense interest among all theoretical and applied sciences in the psychobiological relational mechanisms that underlie early human development in large part derives from Brazelton's groundbreaking studies in the last quarter of the twentieth century. In this chapter evidence from developmental neuroscience will be presented which strongly supports three essential concepts that lie at the core of Brazelton's work. This chapter explores the central role of arousal regulation in maternal-infant interactions, the interpersonal neurobiology of mother-infant face-to-face communication, and the experience-dependent maturation of control systems in the infant's right brain. Throughout the focus will be only on optimal development in infancy (for models of disturbed mother-infant interactions, impaired brain maturation, altered developmental trajectories, and