Meet the Scientist Index Joan Stiles Explore and Discover with Joan Stiles: Brain Development: An Intricate Blend of Nature and Nurture Biography Dr. Stiles‚ research focuses on understanding how children acquire knowledge about their world, especially the physical, spatial environment. Her work encompasses three different, yet related, areas of investigation. One line of work focuses on conceptual development in normally developing children ranging in age from 2- to 18-years. The other line of work examines the effects of early, localized brain injury on how children develop the ability to make sense of the physical world around them. These two lines of research share a common set of conceptual and developmental questions, but approach those questions from different perspectives. The first is centered on the basic question of what abilities develop and when they develop. The second question focuses on what regions of the brain process information about the physical world and how they do so. The third line of inquiry is intended to explore directly the relationship between behavior and brain function, in both normally developing children and children with localized brain injury. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques, Dr. Stiles and colleagues have begun to document developmental change in patterns of brain activation associated with the processing of specific information about the physical world. In collaboration with other laboratories at UCSD, they have also begun a series of studies focused on understanding changes in basic brain physiology and anatomy.