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Introduction 3lescents from the perspective of educational or psychological interventions. Wehoped that researchers from both traditions would be better able to bring about asynthesis of the implications of the new knowledge about brain development tothe problem of designing preventative interventions for mental disorder. Here againwe feel we succeeded, and to this we owe a great deal of gratitude to the researcherswho participated in the meeting and to the creation of this book. This volumeis the culmination of this effort. We hope that readers with a background in neurosciencewill find it as useful as those with an interest only in the healthy developmentof children.In part I of the volume, we focus on the universals of biology and behavior thatmake adolescence a unique period in our lives. Linda Spear reviews what we knowabout the adolescent period from the perspective of evolutionary biology and thestudy of mammals, including humans. She highlights the universal characteristicsof adolescence that make it both an exciting, as well as potentially trying, periodin development. She also presents hypotheses about the role of specific areas ofthe brain that might influence adolescent development. In the second chapter, AnnMasten reviews the vast literature that has accumulated in recent decades on thecharacteristics of resilient youth and the factors that enable young people to faceboth external and internal challenges to their healthy development. She highlightsthe importance of external supports and experiences that can carry adolescentsthrough the rough periods and confer resilience to subsequent challenges. Anyattempt to understand healthy development would need to accommodate this bodyof knowledge.In part II on characteristics of brain and behavior in development, we turn tothe important changes that occur in brain development from birth through adolescencethat have implications for the prevention of mental disorder. ElizabethR. Sowell, Paul M. Thompson, and Arthur W. Toga review the exciting workthat they and others have been conducting to identify the structural changes inthe human brain during adolescence. This research shows how brain changesmay be linked to disorders such as ADHD and to the debilitating effects of earlyalcohol exposure. It also suggests that variation in brain structure is linked tocognitive performance such as measured by intelligence tests. Don Tucker andLyda Moller present a novel synthesis of what is known about brain developmentas it pertains to the formation of identity and attachments to peers duringadolescence. They highlight the potential influence of differences in right- andleft-hemispheric development that may underlie these changes. Finally, ScottHemby and Joann O’Connor review the role that genetic influences play in thedevelopment of neurobiological systems that can influence the expression ofsuch disorders as schizophrenia.In part III, we focus on the effects of maltreatment and stress during early developmentand the consequences for the developing brain and later susceptibilityto mental disorder. In the first chapter in this section, Megan Gunnar provides an