Mental Retardation and Developmental Delay: Genetic and Epigenetic
Factors, by Moyra Smith. 2006. New York: Oxford University Press, 344
pp., $49.95 (HB).
Most of us have had the experience of evaluating a child who looks
just like other children, whose MRI scan is read as normal, and whose test
performance results in a diagnosis of mental retardation. Such children
cause us to ponder the question, “How can a brain look so normal,
yet work so abnormally?” As the results are presented, parents
ponder a different question. They want to know why this has happened to
their child. What makes the question a hard one to respond to is that we
ask ourselves the same question but often do not have an answer. The
neuropsychological conceptualization of mental retardation starts with
skill patterns and works backwards through neural networks looking for
cause. Mental Retardation and Developmental Delay: Genetic and
Epigenetic Factors begins with the inner workings of the cell,
examining genes, gene products, and cell metabolism as the basis for the
observed disruption of learning and memory.