ABSTRACT
Developmental neurology addresses problems of normal and abnormal development of the nervous system. The task of clinical developmental neurology is to detect antenatal and perinatal defects of the central nervous system, which trigger pathological processes in the neuro-ontogenesis of the human nervous system. Early detection of functional and structural deficiencies in maturation processes of the brain is the paramount clinical task of clinical developmental neurology. Simple examinations of infants are usually insufficient to describe structural and functional defects of the brain reliably. As a result, clinical developmental neurology must be concerned with the complexity of the diagnostic problems and methods. The central nervous system is a complex structure and it should not be surprising that diagnostic approaches must be equally complex. Additionally, the maturing brain develops gradually and the diagnostic approach must follow this time-dependent change in organization by repeated follow-up examinations with age dependent methods. Sufficient complexity and longitudinality of the diagnostic procedure characterizes my concept of clinical developmental neurology. It must be considered that during its maturation the brain possesses transient organization systems and no function develops haphazardly during the maturation process. The main task of diagnosis is to identify defects in the transient organization processes of the brain from the various symptoms produced by the defective maturation.
