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Chapter 18Modifying Brain NetworksUnderlying Self-RegulationM. Rosario Rueda, Mary K. Rothbart, Lisa Saccomanno,and Michael I. PosnerIn the invitation to contribute to this volume, the editor raised two issues on whichwe were invited to comment: (1) What neurodevelopmental processes in childrenand adolescents could be altered so that mental disorders might be prevented? (2)What interventions or life experiences might be able to introduce such changes?In our work, we have examined attentional networks related to pathologies thatinfluence the ability to regulate emotions and actions, and we have developed anintervention that holds some promise in improving attention in young childrenand perhaps mitigating the effects of these pathologies. Our work is largely withyoung children. We believe, however, that both the methods used and some ofthe results described in this chapter could be important in answering the two questionsposed by the organizers.In this chapter we briefly review the anatomy and function of attentional networks,with special emphasis on the executive network, the one most clearly relatedto self-regulation. Next, we present evidence from our work and othersshowing that various pathologies are related to the functioning of this network.This section clearly establishes that there is an association between pathologiesand deficits in the executive attentional network, although it does not show thatthe deficits of attention cause these pathologies. Finally, we introduce an interventionthat has been shown to improve the function of the executive attentionnetwork in young children. We consider the possibility that such interventions401