In literacy education, neuroscience research has been alluded to increasingly in work meant to substantiate cognitive models of the reading process related to text decoding and its instruction. As a result, this material tends to focus on early reading or reading disability and dyslexia (e.g., Hudson, High, & Al Otaiba, 2007; Shaywitz, 2003). It has also cropped up in educational psychology and special education texts for the same purposes (e.g., Alexander, 2005). And it can be found in abundant, if degraded, degree in the so-called "brain-based" and "brain-compatible" teacher materials that weave together loose reference to the brain, cognitive theory, and educational practice. This author states that it is only in education circles (and the popular media) that the belief goes unchallenged that neuroscience is an obvious (and authoritative) handmaiden of cognitive educational psychology and its theoretical presumptions. He contends that the impact of what the neurosciences have to inform about literacy development, language, and learning will arrive when biochemical and anatomical pathways have been mapped from environment to genome (and back again) indicating quite profoundly, as a scientific matter, that environmental history is a major factor in the nature of social, emotional, and intellectual development and educational propensities. Expecting that this may occur within the next 10 years, Hruby suggests that literacy education professionals should be prepared to inform and lead the policies and practices it will spawn.