ABSTRACT
Both biological and environmental factors influence brain structure and function throughout the life span. This is particularly obvious in development, when the brain undergoes maturational processes such as myelination and cortical architecture construction. These processes lead to specialization of networks accompanied by increasing cognitive performance (Casey, Tottenham, Liston, & Durston, 2005). In late adulthood, biological and environmental factors seem to impact the structure and function of the brain, such that the reverse pattern is observed: degeneration of myelin sheaths (Peters, 2002) and neuronal death, more diffuse and less specific neural networks engaged during cognitive tasks, and decreasing cognitive performance. So far, many studies have established links between cognition and brain structure as well as brain processes.
