Margaret Alice Kennard (September 25, 1899—December 12, 1975) was a

neurologist Neurology (from el, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the brain, the spinal c ...

who principally studied the effects of neurological damage on

primate Primates are a diverse order of mammals. They are divided into the strepsirrhines, which include the lemurs, galagos, and lorisids, and the haplorhines, which include the tarsiers and the simians (monkeys and apes, the latter including huma ...

s. Her work led to the creation of the Kennard Principle, which posits a negative linear relationship between age of a brain lesion and the outcome expectancy: in other words, that the earlier in life a brain lesion occurs, the more likely it is for some compensation mechanism to reverse at least some of the lesion's bad effects.

Biography

Kennard's father was a notable landscape architect and naturalist; her paternal grandparents were the businessman and abolitionist Martin Kennard and the naturalist and women's rights activist Caroline Smith Kennard. Kennard graduated from

Bryn Mawr College Bryn Mawr College ( ; Welsh: ) is a women's liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Founded as a Quaker institution in 1885, Bryn Mawr is one of the Seven Sister colleges, a group of elite, historically women's colleges in the United St ...

in 1922. She earned a Rockefeller Traveling Fellowship for study in Western Europe from 1934 to 1936.Finger, Stanley. ''Margaret Kennard on Sparing and Recovery of Function: A Tribute on The 100th anniversary of Her Birth''. Journal of the History of the Neurosciences. Vol. 8, Iss. 3, 1999. She also studied the effects of stimulants and cortical depressants on monkeys with brain damage.

Kennard Principle

The observation that young brains reorganize more effectively than adult brains was first articulated by Kennard in 1936. Consequently, the notion that how well a brain can reorganize itself after damage as a function of the developmental stage is now known as the "Kennard principle".Freberg, L. ''Discovering biological psychology''. 2nd. Wadsworth Pub Co, 2009. 251. Print. This research led to one of the earliest experimental evidence for age effects on

neuroplasticity Neuroplasticity, also known as neural plasticity, or brain plasticity, is the ability of Neural circuit, neural networks in the brain to change through growth and reorganization. It is when the brain is rewired to function in some way that diffe ...

. She worked closely with John Fulton in her famous infant brain studies.

References

External links

APA information for 1936 Article
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kennard, Margaret 1899 births 1975 deaths Neuropsychologists 20th-century women scientists