Decoding the infant mind: A welcome translation

Reviews the book, Infant Brain Development: Formation of the Mind and the Emergence of Consciousness by Hugo Lagercrantz (see record 2016-57351-000). Lagercrantz’s book on infant brain development is a pleasure to read for its style and substance. Readers who enjoy reading Allison Gopnik’s research on theory of mind in infants (Gopnik, Meltzoff, & Bryant, 1997; Gopnik & Wellman, 1992) or Franz de Waal’s work on social and affective neuroscience will find that this work is of a similar cast (Preston & de Waal, 2002). As Lagercrantz described it, nothing about his book is “airy-fairy.” It focuses on the substrates of consciousness, how they develop, when and why. The emergence of the infant mind is built on the accumulation of small gains and the integrity of brain substrates. His book is likely to be of greatest interest to neuropsychologists and neuroscientists, particularly those on internal review boards evaluating pre- and perinatal research, and child or developmental psychologists. However, any reader interested in consciousness may appreciate the gentle and straightforward way in which the author describes many of the relevant domains of neuroscience. Lagercrantz’s curiosity is contagious, and his book introduces some of the language and ideas within neuroscience that allow a more clinical or philosophically minded reader to venture into that literature with more comfort. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)