Integrated Calendar

Academic achievements such as math and reading are key predictors for future success at school, university, and later in life. Additionally, failure in these critical capacities negatively impacts the welfare of society as a whole. Current understanding of the link between high-level cognition, such as math and reading, and the brain has been primarily restricted to understanding the relationship between brain structure or function. At the same time a substantial body of animal and clinical research showing that cortical inhibition and excitation at the molecular or cellular levels play a critical role in efficient information transfer in the brain. It has further been suggested that cortical inhibition and excitation affects cognition in humans. I will present several studies that show how cortical inhibition and excitation are linked to high-level cognitive abilities in the child and adult human brain, and specifically how we can exogenously modulate cortical inhibition and excitation to optimise brain functions and improve cognition in typical and atypical populations. Such a multidisciplinary approach has the potential to bridge the separated strands of current research in psychology and education, system and molecular neuroscience, as well as animal models.