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Author: C. G. N. Mascie-Taylor Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 0521453992 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 260
Book Description
Plasticity refers to the ability of many organisms to change their biology or behaviour to respond to changes in the environment, particularly when these are stressful. Humans are, perhaps, the most plastic of all species, and hence the most variable. This book reflects on the history of research in this area, state-of-the-art research methods and discoveries and needs for future research in human plasticity and variability. Topics discussed include child growth, starvation, disease of both young and old and the effects of migration, modernisation and other life-style changes. The book will be especially useful to biological anthropologists, human biologists and medical scientists interested in knowing more about how and why humans vary.
Author: Steven E. Brauth Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 9780262023269 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 218
Book Description
Plasticity of Development brings together innovative, current research on the nature/nurture issue, and presents new comparative approaches to epigenetic processes processes in which environmental signals act upon the genome. Plasticity of Development brings together innovative, current research by Jerome Kagan, Stephen Suomi, Sandra Scarr, Patricia Kuhl, Peter Mader, and Pasko Rakic on the nature/nurture issue, and presents new comparative approaches to epigenetic processes processes in which environmental signals act upon the genome--from the fields of child psychology, animal learning, brain development, and psycholinguistics. The studies address important issues concerning continuity of developmental processes, the nature of biological and environmental signals controlling epigenetic mechanisms, and the adaptive significance of developmental pathways. An introduction discusses theories of self-organizing systems including the important concept of canalization, which is taken up in chapters by Mader, Rakic, Kagan, and Suomi. Central to the study of development, canalization encompasses the idea that genetic information supports a self-organizing process that is guided by environmental input but that also provides a set of buffers against abnormal environmental and even genetic information. Kagan and Suomi describe continuity in developmental processes in humans and in Rhesus monkeys, revealing that in at least one important personality characteristic, response to challenge and stress, the behaviors and physiological correlates are strikingly similar. Scarr investigates the role of adoption and home environment on developmental continuity and shows that to a surprising extent children create the environmental niches they fill. Kuhl provides additional insight into the nature of the biological and environmental signals controlling epigenetic programs through her work on the development of speech perception in human children. The issue she raises of what is general and what is special in human speech perception and language development bears directly on the open versus closed teaming systems observed by Mader for oscine songbirds. In the most detailed account of the biological and environmental signals controlling epigenesis, Pasko Rakic describes the ontogenetic processes that produce the primate cerebral cortex.
Author: Tobias Rees Publisher: Univ of California Press ISBN: 0520288130 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 348
Book Description
Throughout the twentieth century, neuronal researchers knew the adult human brain to be a thoroughly fixed and immutable cellular structure, devoid of any developmental potential. Plastic Reason is a study of the efforts of a few Parisian neurobiologists to overturn this rigid conception of the central nervous system by showing that basic embryogenetic processes—most spectacularly the emergence of new cellular tissue in the form of new neurons, axons, dendrites, and synapses—continue in the mature brain. Furthermore, these researchers sought to demonstrate that the new tissues are still unspecific and hence literally plastic, and that this cellular plasticity is constitutive of the possibility of the human. Plastic Reason, grounded in years of fieldwork and historical research, is an anthropologist’s account of what has arguably been one of the most sweeping events in the history of brain research—the highly contested effort to consider the adult brain in embryogenetic terms. A careful analysis of the disproving of an established truth, it reveals the turmoil that such a disruption brings about and the emergence of new possibilities of thinking and knowing.
Author: Cynthia Garcia Coll Publisher: Psychology Press ISBN: 1135628963 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 332
Book Description
What does it mean to find a gene or set of genes that are associated with ADHD, schizophrenia, or autism? Could we eradicate such diseases from our species through gene therapy? Is it possible to eradicate from our genome the genetic material that predisposes us to be too aggressive, too shy, less intelligent, or not active enough? Who has the political power and/or moral authority to make these decisions? The premise of Nature and Nurture is that the complexity of the transactions between nature and nurture--between genes and the environment from the cellular to the cultural level--make these questions incredibly complex and in need of careful attention by educators, scientists, the public, and policymakers. A product of the conference held at Brown University in 2001, this book suggests that genes and environments work together interactively in a complex and closely intertwined fashion. The contributors to this book--biologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and economists--present knowledge that enables research and application to transcend the traditional question of whatever variance or significance is attributed to genetics versus environment in the development of a particular behavioral trait. This book presents a variety of views on the current status of knowledge about the ways in which dynamic, developmental, mutually interactive systems in the genetic and environmental domains operate. The chapters represent contributions from different perspectives.
Author: Ursula M. Staudinger Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media ISBN: 9781402073830 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 548
Book Description
Understanding developmental processes in the individual as well as in aggregates of individuals is an important aim of many of the social and behavioral sciences. This book presents a theoretical framework for this endeavor - an architecture for the study of human development across different disciplines. This architecture describes two major sources of human development (biology and culture) and posits three central developmental mechanisms (selection, optimization, and compensation).
Author: Eugene Gollin Publisher: Elsevier ISBN: 0323157203 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 297
Book Description
Developmental Plasticity: Behavioral and Biological Aspects of Variations in Development explores the behavioral and biological aspects of variations in development from a variety of theoretical viewpoints and research contexts. Topics covered include evolution and genetic variability; sensory bases of infant perception; and learning and ethology. The infancy of human learning processes is also discussed, along with epistemology and developmental psychology. Comprised of eight chapters, this book opens with a review of the broad evolutionary landscape and the specific genetic mechanisms implicated in biological and behavioral development. It then describes the sensory apparatus available to neonatal human beings and analyzes the similarities and differences between ethological theory and learning theory. Developmental plasticity is also examined in interdisciplinary contexts, while the acquisition of behavior patterns during early postnatal development is explored from a traditional learning theory point of view. The remaining chapters focus on the role played by asymmetry in general and by cerebral asymmetry in particular in the generation of individuality; cultural and biological instances of plasticity in development; and the barriers separating epistemology from developmental psychology and psycholinguistics. This monograph will be a useful resource for developmental psychologists and other professionals devoted to child development and learning, as well as those in the fields of genetics and behavioral and biological sciences.
Author: Heather H. Yeung Publisher: Springer Nature ISBN: 303044158X Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 117
Book Description
On Literary Plasticity: Readings with Kafka in Ecology, Voice, and Object-Life calls to Franz Kafka, and in particular ‘Die Sorge des Hausvaters’, for aid in charting the long reach of plastic on the human mind and world. In this book, Heather H. Yeung builds a past and future ecology of plastic, arguing that it is through a deep reading of literature that we can begin to understand more clearly what it is that plastic means to us today, asking, under the auspices of the idea of literary plasticity: what are the true depths of our twenty-first-century fascination with plastic? How did we become so entangled? How can we come to a better understanding of plastic’s role in our imagination, our environment, and our lives? What can literature teach us in this respect? Why should we care?
Author: Benjamin Gregg Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1108897525 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 275
Book Description
Human genetic enhancement, examined from the standpoint of the new field of political bioethics, displaces the age-old question of truth: What is human nature? This book displaces that question with another: What kind of human nature should humans want to create for themselves? To answer that question, this book answers two others: What constraints should limit the applications of rapidly developing biotechnologies? What could possibly form the basis for corresponding public policy in a democratic society? Benjamin Gregg focuses on the distinctly political dimensions of human nature, where politics refers to competition among competing values on which to base public policy, legislation, and political culture. This book offers citizens of democratic communities a broad perspective on how they together might best approach urgent questions of how to deal with the socially and morally challenging potential for human genetic engineering.
Author: Bryan Kolb Publisher: Psychology Press ISBN: 113478421X Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 226
Book Description
There are few books devoted to the topic of brain plasticity and behavior. Most previous works that cover topics related to brain plasticity do not include extensive discussions of behavior. The first to try to address the relationship between recovery from brain damage and changes in the brain that might support the recovery, this volume includes studies of humans as well as laboratory species, particularly rats. The subject matter identifies a consistent correlation between specific changes in the brain and behavioral recovery, as well as various factors such as sex and experience that influence this correlation in consistent ways. Evolving from a series of lectures given as the McEachran Lectures at the University of Alberta, this volume originally began as a summary of the lectures, but has expanded to include more background literature, allowing the reader to see the author's biases, assumptions, and hunches in a broader perspective. In writing this volume, the author had two goals in mind: * to initiate senior undergraduates or graduate psychology, biology, neuroscience or other interested students to the issues and questions regarding the nature of brain plasticity, and * to provide a monograph in the form of an extended summary of the work the author and his colleagues have done on brain plasticity and recovery of function.
Author: Richard M. Lerner
Author: Richard M. Lerner
Author: C. G. N. Mascie-Taylor
Author: Steven E. Brauth
Author: Tobias Rees
Author: Cynthia Garcia Coll
Author: Ursula M. Staudinger
Author: Eugene Gollin
Author: Heather H. Yeung
Author: Benjamin Gregg
Author: Bryan Kolb