Since the late 1960s, scientists have come to use the term ‘neuroscience’ to encompass a range of areas having to do with studying the brain and the nervous system, including neurology, pharmacology, (evolutionary) psychology, anatomy, molecular biology, genetics, and physiology. Neuroscience in the most technical sense remained until relatively recently the preserve of medical and scientific studies of medical conditions such as tumours and diseases of the nervous system. But since the late 20th century, especially if not only in relation to childhood, neuroscience has become a pervasive and widely disseminated way of explaining child development—emotional, cognitive, and behavioural—and of accounting for both the origins and dynamics of a wide range of childhood disorders ranging from attention deficit hyperactive disorder to autism to gender dysphoria.

The ...