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Five experimental articles in the current volume contribute to this exciting inquiry. NIRS has filled this gap, opening up the way for exciting new discoveries about the brain specialization for speech and language in young babies (e.g., Pena et al., 2003 Sato et al., 2012). While it is well established that in the majority of right-handed adults, language is preferentially processed in the left hemisphere (e.g., Friederici, 2005), the reasons for and the ontogenetic origins of this left lateralization have so far been less well understood, partly because the field lacked a safe, fully non-invasive, participant-friendly brain imaging method with which to probe the infant brain.

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These general contributions are followed by a series of empirical papers exploring a key issue in the study of the neural correlates of language learning and development, the nature and origins of the brain specialization for speech and language. They provide a critical, but constructive overview of theoretical questions about linguistic and cognitive development that have been asked, outline challenges that the NIRS community still needs to face and offer recommendations for optimal experimental designs and data interpretations practices.

( 2011), cover general theoretical issues and methodological principles. The first two contributions, by Fava et al. Contributions from the pioneers of this method are selected, illustrating how NIRS has allowed developmental researchers to ask theoretically relevant questions that more traditional methods couldn't address. The main focus is to highlight innovative and foundational studies that go beyond methodological issues and advance our theoretical understanding of infant and child development. This Research Topic covers the latest advances in these areas brought about by NIRS imaging. After more than a decade of technological development, NIRS has become a reliable, easy-to-use and efficient tool to explore the linguistic and cognitive abilities of neonates and young infants, opening new vistas for the investigation of language acquisition and cognitive development. Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) is a relatively novel and increasingly popular optical imaging technique that has revolutionized brain research in the developmental populations (Villringer and Chance, 1997 Lloyd-Fox et al., 2009 Gervain et al., 2011).

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