Abstract

Academic achievements such as maths and reading are key predictors for an individual’s future professional success, whereas failure in these critical capacities negatively impacts the welfare of society as a whole. Current understanding of the link between high-level cognition and brain is mainly restricted to understanding the relationship between brain structure/function and achievements, despite a substantial body of animal and clinical research showing that cortical inhibition and excitation at the molecular or cellular levels play a critical role in efficient information transfer in the brain. Specifically, it has been suggested that cortical inhibition and excitation affects cognition in humans. I will present studies that show how cortical inhibition and excitation are linked to high-level cognitive abilities in the child and adult human brain. Moreover, I will show that we can exogenously modulate cortical inhibition and excitation during cognitive training to optimise brain functions and improve cognition in typical and atypical development. Such a multidisciplinary approach has the potential to bridge the separated strands of current research in psychology and education, system and molecular neuroscience, as well as animal models.