Download or read book On the Nature of Human Plasticity written by Richard M. Lerner and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1984-08-31 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book questions the extent to which human beings are capable of changing their physical characteristics and behavioural patterns.
Download or read book From Molecules to Minds written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2008-12-07 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neuroscience has made phenomenal advances over the past 50 years and the pace of discovery continues to accelerate. On June 25, 2008, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Forum on Neuroscience and Nervous System Disorders hosted more than 70 of the leading neuroscientists in the world, for a workshop titled "From Molecules to Minds: Challenges for the 21st Century." The objective of the workshop was to explore a set of common goals or "Grand Challenges" posed by participants that could inspire and rally both the scientific community and the public to consider the possibilities for neuroscience in the 21st century. The progress of the past in combination with new tools and techniques, such as neuroimaging and molecular biology, has positioned neuroscience on the cusp of even greater transformational progress in our understanding of the brain and how its inner workings result in mental activity. This workshop summary highlights the important issues and challenges facing the field of neuroscience as presented to those in attendance at the workshop, as well as the subsequent discussion that resulted. As a result, three overarching Grand Challenges emerged: How does the brain work and produce mental activity? How does physical activity in the brain give rise to thought, emotion, and behavior? How does the interplay of biology and experience shape our brains and make us who we are today? How do we keep our brains healthy? How do we protect, restore, or enhance the functioning of our brains as we age?
Download or read book Nature Via Nurture written by Matt Ridley and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2003-04-29 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following his highly praised and bestselling book Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Matt Ridley has written a brilliant and profound book about the roots of human behavior. Nature via Nurture explores the complex and endlessly intriguing question of what makes us who we are. In February 2001 it was announced that the human genome contains not 100,000 genes, as originally postulated, but only 30,000. This startling revision led some scientists to conclude that there are simply not enough human genes to account for all the different ways people behave: we must be made by nurture, not nature. Yet again biology was to be stretched on the Procrustean bed of the nature-nurture debate. Matt Ridley argues that the emerging truth is far more interesting than this myth. Nurture depends on genes, too, and genes need nurture. Genes not only predetermine the broad structure of the brain, they also absorb formative experiences, react to social cues, and even run memory. They are consequences as well as causes of the will. Published fifty years after the discovery of the double helix of DNA, Nature via Nurture chronicles a revolution in our understanding of genes. Ridley recounts the hundred years' war between the partisans of nature and nurture to explain how this paradoxical creature, the human being, can be simultaneously free-willed and motivated by instinct and culture. Nature via Nurture is an enthralling,up-to-the-minute account of how genes build brains to absorb experience.
Download or read book Translational Research in Traumatic Brain Injury written by Daniel Laskowitz and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2015-12-01 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) remains a significant source of death and permanent disability, contributing to nearly one-third of all injury related deaths in the United States and exacting a profound personal and economic toll. Despite the increased resources that have recently been brought to bear to improve our understanding of TBI, the development of new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches has been disappointingly slow. Translational Research in Traumatic Brain Injury attempts to integrate expertise from across specialties to address knowledge gaps in the field of TBI. Its chapters cover a wide scope of TBI research in five broad areas: Epidemiology Pathophysiology Diagnosis Current treatment strategies and sequelae Future therapies Specific topics discussed include the societal impact of TBI in both the civilian and military populations, neurobiology and molecular mechanisms of axonal and neuronal injury, biomarkers of traumatic brain injury and their relationship to pathology, neuroplasticity after TBI, neuroprotective and neurorestorative therapy, advanced neuroimaging of mild TBI, neurocognitive and psychiatric symptoms following mild TBI, sports-related TBI, epilepsy and PTSD following TBI, and more. The book integrates the perspectives of experts across disciplines to assist in the translation of new ideas to clinical practice and ultimately to improve the care of the brain injured patient.
Download or read book From Neurons to Neighborhoods written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2000-11-13 with total page 610 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How we raise young children is one of today's most highly personalized and sharply politicized issues, in part because each of us can claim some level of "expertise." The debate has intensified as discoveries about our development-in the womb and in the first months and years-have reached the popular media. How can we use our burgeoning knowledge to assure the well-being of all young children, for their own sake as well as for the sake of our nation? Drawing from new findings, this book presents important conclusions about nature-versus-nurture, the impact of being born into a working family, the effect of politics on programs for children, the costs and benefits of intervention, and other issues. The committee issues a series of challenges to decision makers regarding the quality of child care, issues of racial and ethnic diversity, the integration of children's cognitive and emotional development, and more. Authoritative yet accessible, From Neurons to Neighborhoods presents the evidence about "brain wiring" and how kids learn to speak, think, and regulate their behavior. It examines the effect of the climate-family, child care, community-within which the child grows.
Download or read book Brain Plasticity and Behavior written by Bryan Kolb and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book The Primate Origins of Human Nature written by Carel P. Van Schaik and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-01-26 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Primate Origins of Human Nature (Volume 3 in The Foundations of Human Biology series) blends several elements from evolutionary biology as applied to primate behavioral ecology and primate psychology, classical physical anthropology and evolutionary psychology of humans. However, unlike similar books, it strives to define the human species relative to our living and extinct relatives, and thus highlights uniquely derived human features. The book features a truly multi-disciplinary, multi-theory, and comparative species approach to subjects not usually presented in textbooks focused on humans, such as the evolution of culture, life history, parenting, and social organization.
Download or read book Human Variability and Plasticity written by C. G. N. Mascie-Taylor and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1995-07-13 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book A Neurocomputational Perspective written by Paul M. Churchland and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A Bradford book."Includes index. Bibliography: p. [305]-313.
Download or read book Neuronal Plasticity Building a Bridge from the Laboratory to the Clinic written by Jordan Grafman and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last twenty years there has been an explosive growth in our understanding of the molecular, cellular, and anatomical changes that occur in the days and weeks following brain injury. It is now clear that training and exposure to certain environments can modify and shape neuronal plasticity in lower animals and humans. In humans, in particular, there are new ways of charting neuronal plasticity at the ensemble or regional level using functional neuroimaging techniques such as positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging. Thus, the time seems right for transporting the laboratory results to the clinic so that experimental findings can be tested in the "field". This volume provides some impetus to moving the field of cognitive neuroscience a little further in its efforts to improve the lives of patients who have suffered a debilitating brain injury.
Download or read book Brain Development and Cognition written by Mark H. Johnson and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first edition of this successful reader brought together key readings in the area of developmental cognitive neuroscience for students. Now updated in order to keep up with this fast moving field, the volume includes new readings illustrating recent developments along with updated versions of previous contributions.
Download or read book Developmental Plasticity and Evolution written by Mary Jane West-Eberhard and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003-03-13 with total page 815 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive synthesis on development and evolution: it applies to all aspects of development, at all levels of organization and in all organisms, taking advantage of modern findings on behavior, genetics, endocrinology, molecular biology, evolutionary theory and phylogenetics to show the connections between developmental mechanisms and evolutionary change. This book solves key problems that have impeded a definitive synthesis in the past. It uses new concepts and specific examples to show how to relate environmentally sensitive development to the genetic theory of adaptive evolution and to explain major patterns of change. In this book development includes not only embryology and the ontogeny of morphology, sometimes portrayed inadequately as governed by "regulatory genes," but also behavioral development and physiological adaptation, where plasticity is mediated by genetically complex mechanisms like hormones and learning. The book shows how the universal qualities of phenotypes--modular organization and plasticity--facilitate both integration and change. Here you will learn why it is wrong to describe organisms as genetically programmed; why environmental induction is likely to be more important in evolution than random mutation; and why it is crucial to consider both selection and developmental mechanism in explanations of adaptive evolution. This book satisfies the need for a truly general book on development, plasticity and evolution that applies to living organisms in all of their life stages and environments. Using an immense compendium of examples on many kinds of organisms, from viruses and bacteria to higher plants and animals, it shows how the phenotype is reorganized during evolution to produce novelties, and how alternative phenotypes occupy a pivotal role as a phase of evolution that fosters diversification and speeds change. The arguments of this book call for a new view of the major themes of evolutionary biology, as shown in chapters on gradualism, homology, environmental induction, speciation, radiation, macroevolution, punctuation, and the maintenance of sex. No other treatment of development and evolution since Darwin's offers such a comprehensive and critical discussion of the relevant issues. Developmental Plasticity and Evolution is designed for biologists interested in the development and evolution of behavior, life-history patterns, ecology, physiology, morphology and speciation. It will also appeal to evolutionary paleontologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and teachers of general biology.
Download or read book Plasticity of Development written by Steven E. Brauth and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book On Human Nature written by Michel Tibayrenc and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2016-09-12 with total page 814 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On Human Nature: Biology, Psychology, Ethics, Politics, and Religion covers the present state of knowledge on human diversity and its adaptative significance through a broad and eclectic selection of representative chapters. This transdisciplinary work brings together specialists from various fields who rarely interact, including geneticists, evolutionists, physicians, ethologists, psychoanalysts, anthropologists, sociologists, theologians, historians, linguists, and philosophers. Genomic diversity is covered in several chapters dealing with biology, including the differences in men and apes and the genetic diversity of mankind. Top specialists, known for their open mind and broad knowledge have been carefully selected to cover each topic. The book is therefore at the crossroads between biology and human sciences, going beyond classical science in the Popperian sense. The book is accessible not only to specialists, but also to students, professors, and the educated public. Glossaries of specialized terms and general public references help nonspecialists understand complex notions, with contributions avoiding technical jargon. Provides greater understanding of diversity and population structure and history, with crucial foundational knowledge needed to conduct research in a variety of fields, such as genetics and disease Includes three robust sections on biological, psychological, and ethical aspects, with cross-fertilization and reciprocal references between the three sections Contains contributions by leading experts in their respective fields working under the guidance of internationally recognized and highly respected editors
Download or read book Beyond Human Nature written by Jesse J. Prinz and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012-01-26 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this provocative, revelatory tour de force, Jesse Prinz reveals how the cultures we live in - not biology - determine how we think and feel. He examines all aspects of our behaviour, looking at everything from our intellects and emotions, to love and sex, morality and even madness. This book seeks to go beyond traditional debates of nature and nurture. He is not interested in finding universal laws but, rather, in understanding, explaining and celebrating our differences. Why do people raised in Western countries tend to see the trees before the forest, while people from East Asia see the forest before the trees? Why, in South East Asia, is there a common form of mental illness, unheard of in the West, in which people go into a trancelike state after being startled? Compared to Northerners, why are people in the American South more than twice as likely to kill someone over an argument? And, above all, just how malleable are we? Prinz shows that the vast diversity of our behaviour is not engrained. He picks up where biological explanations leave off. He tells us the human story.
Download or read book Plastic Reason written by Tobias Rees and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Phenotypic Plasticity Evolution written by David W. Pfennig and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2021-05-31 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Phenotypic plasticity – the ability of an individual organism to alter its features in direct response to a change in its environment – is ubiquitous. Understanding how and why this phenomenon exists is crucial because it unites all levels of biological inquiry. This book brings together researchers who approach plasticity from diverse perspectives to explore new ideas and recent findings about the causes and consequences of plasticity. Contributors also discuss such controversial topics as how plasticity shapes ecological and evolutionary processes; whether specific plastic responses can be passed to offspring; and whether plasticity has left an important imprint on the history of life. Importantly, each chapter highlights key questions for future research. Drawing on numerous studies of plasticity in natural populations of plants and animals, this book aims to foster greater appreciation for this important, but frequently misunderstood phenomenon. Key Features Written in an accessible style with numerous illustrations, including many in color Reviews the history of the study of plasticity, including Darwin’s views Most chapters conclude with recommendations for future research
