FIRST CALL FOR ABSTRACTS – FRONTIERS IN DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY & FRONTIERS IN HUMAN NEUROSCIENCE - The social emotional developmental and cognitive neuroscience of socioeconomic gradients
In a joint collaboration with Frontiers in Psychology and Frontiers in Neuroscience , we are currently organizing a Research Topic, "The social emotional developmental and cognitive neuroscience of socioeconomic gradients: Laboratory, population, cross-cultural and community developmental approaches", and as host editors we think that your work could make an excellent contribution.
It is an honor to invite you to join us to contribute to this special issue and considering submitting your work.
The papers will be rigorously refereed but fair reviews will also be insured. In addition, for transparency and for offering hot debates, we may want to consider publishing reviews as commentary under the section "perspectives". This will depend on how the Research Topic (RT) develops and on the joint decision of all editors of this RT.
The proposed structure of this Research Topic is provided below.
Host Specialty: Frontiers in Developmental Psychology, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
Topic Title: The social emotional developmental and cognitive neuroscience of socioeconomic gradients: Laboratory, population, cross-cultural and community developmental approaches
Topic Editor(s): Amedeo D'Angiulli, Stefania Maggi, Sebastian Lipina
DESCRIPTION: The study of the socioeconomic neural gradients, that is, functional and structural brain differences that correspond to variations in socioeconomic status, is a very young area of multidisciplinary research within the neural and behavior sciences. Although a general consensus of basic results is quickly emerging, as in any emerging area of inquiry, the approaches used within it can still be influenced by epistemological or ideological stances inherited from other disciplines (and potentially implicit ideological systems). Inadvertently, these influences can lead this critically important new area of research to methodological and ethical foundational challenges and issues that are in need of debate over and beyond consensus on interventions aiming at the effects of poverty on children’s development (e.g., poverty definition criteria, lack of specificity when considering child poverty in terms of how children experience different type of deprivations, or lack of critics regarding social exclusion in different countries). The risk is a tendency to simplify the complexity that characterizes both phenomena of development and social inequality. The overarching aim of this broad research topic is to give the full spectrum of views on the study of socioeconomic neural differences representing comparatively the best examples of research in the field from different methodological stances (i.e., laboratory vs. field) and theoretical approaches (i.e., mechanistic vs. adaptive). The unitary background framework provided as test bench for the comparisons is human brain development in the broadest sense of the term.
The aim of this research topic is to portray the current status in different disciplines addressing social inequities and human brain development. The main purpose is to house a rich global international critical and synthetic debate with focus on empirical research updates, implications and challenges in Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, Social Sciences and interdisciplinary arena efforts. In this context, the contributions will represent four strategic domains: (1) Cognitive Neuroscience (behavioral and neuroimaging findings in different countries and their implications at social development and educational levels); (2) Social Sciences -Economy, Anthropology/Sociology, Education (updating scientific, ethical and ideological issues on social inequities worldwide, addressing the challenges we are facing: complexity, interdisciplinary efforts); and (3) Interdisciplinary efforts (scientific and policy priorities for the next decade); (4) Neuropsychoendocrinology (relationships between social context and acute/chronic stress across the world).
Submissions pertinent to this research topic may include (but not be limited to): Examples of population based approaches currently in place: epidemiological studies, large scale studies on administrative school and health; populations based studies in need of being conducted: large scale brain (EEGs, MRI) assessments to debunk the myth of deficiency in vulnerable populations and studies that draw attention to the need to reform societies not intervene on individuals; reduction of social inequality that is the result of deficits in social structures; large scale assessment of community mental health among groups of children sharing common environmental features rather than recruiting unrelated individual children into a sample; in-depth neuroethical, epistemological and sociological analysis of structural influences (e.g., schools, childcare) and their influences on vulnerable groups from a population perspective rather than the effects of the individual child; neuroimaging studies (perspectives, reviews, and empirical research reports) that disentangle the developmental dynamics of how socioeconomic status may influence brain plasticity; epigenetic studies addressing the issue of gene-environment interactions in determining neural gradients.
Abstract Submission Deadline: Jan 15, 2012
Article Submission Deadline: Mar 31, 2012
All papers will appear in the same place on Frontiers journals website and in one ebook, but Neuroscience papers will be submitted through Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, and non-neuroscience papers (those pertaining to epidemiology and those that lean closer to psychology) through Frontiers in Developmental Psychology. This will mean that some papers will appear in PubMed under Frontiers in Psychology, while others will appear as Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. Other than that, the papers will be centralized on our website once they're published, and you can submit to the most suitable journal.
Please help us make this the best Research Topic ever!
Amedeo D’Angiulli, Stefania Maggi, and Sebastian Lipina