Product Description
This book's main focus is the development of skilled motor actions by children: commonplace but vital actions such as maintaining posture, walking, reaching and grasping, and manipulating objects and tools. It represents a state-of-the-art report on motor development linking neurophysiological and neuropsychological approaches. Contributors employ examples from both normal and pathological development to study pre- and postnatal brain development and its relationship to skilled motor actions and patterns of behavioral change.

Table of Contents
Contributors
Foreword
Preface
1 Brain Development and the Development of Tone and Movement 1
2 The Importance of Fetal Movements 42
3 Postural Control in Children: Development in Typical Populations and in Children with Cerebral Palsy and Down Syndrome 54
4 Neurobiology of Normal and Impaired Locomotor Development 78
5 Locomotor Development in Children with Cerebral Palsy 101
6 The Interaction of Muscle Maturation with Movement and Posture 124
7 Development and Function of Cutaneomuscular Reflexes and their Pathophysiology in Cerebral Palsy 145
8 Skilled Action and the Development of the Cortico-Spinal Tract in Primates 162
9 The Development of Descending Motor Pathways in Children with Hemiplegic Cerebral Palsy: The Effects of Early Brain Damage 177
10 Postural Adjustments Associated with Ballistic Movements in Adult Humans 201
11 Development of Neural Mechanisms Underlying Grasping in Children 214
12 The Development of Grip Patterns in Infancy 232
13 Perception in Action Approach to Cerebral Palsy 257
14 Variability and Stability in the Development of Skilled Actions 286
15 Dynamic Systems Theory and Skill Development in Infants and Children 319
16 Adaptive Model Theory: Central Processing in Acquisition of Skill 346
Index 371