Studies of cortical development and function have established critical periods, e.g. specific windows in time, during development when the environment can remodel, under genetic influences, to establish adaptive functional characteristics that persist into adulthood (Crews et al., 2007). In humans, cortical development occurs over the first 3 decades of life with changes in grey matter and myelination during the transitions from childhood to adolescence to adulthood. Cortical areas develop at different ages with dorsal parietal and primary sensorimotor regions increasing function during ages 4-8, followed by parietal areas of language and spatial orientation around 11-13 years of age and frontal areas involved in integrating information from senses, reasoning, and other “executive functions” maturing last, during late adolescence (Gogtay et al., 2004; Toga et al., 2006). Age-related changes in cortical structure are associated with improved function. Cortical thinning in the left dorsal frontal and parietal lobes correlate with improved performance on a test of general verbal intellectual functioning between the ages of 5-11 (Sowell et al., 2004). Other studies following individuals from age 6 through 19 found that individuals with superior
