Examining developmental plasticity in the skeletal system through a sensitive developmental windows framework

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cait B. McPherson
Keyword(s):  
Developmental Plasticity ◽  
Skeletal System ◽  
Developmental Windows

scholarly journals Neuroendocrine models of social anxiety disorder

2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-293 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Anxiety Disorder ◽  
Social Anxiety ◽  
Social Anxiety Disorder ◽  
Developmental Plasticity ◽  
Peptide Hormones ◽  
Social Avoidance ◽  
Socially Anxious ◽  
Submissive Behavior ◽  
Early Trauma ◽  
Developmental Windows

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a highly prevalent and disabling disorder with key behavioral traits of social fearfulness, social avoidance, and submissiveness. Here we argue that hormonal systems play a key role in mediating social anxiety, and so may be important in SAD. Hormonal alterations, often established early in development through the interaction between biological and psychological factors (eg, genetic predisposition x early trauma), predispose to socially fearful, avoidant, and submissive behavior. However, whereas gene variants and histories of trauma persist, hormonal systems can be remodeled over the course of life. Hormones play a key role during the periods of all sensitive developmental windows (ie, prenatal, neonatal, puberty, aging), and are capable of opening up new developmental windows in adulthood. Indeed, the developmental plasticity of our social brain, and thus of social behavior in adulthood, critically depends on steroid hormones such as testosterone and peptide hormones such as oxytocin. These steroid and peptide hormones in interaction with social experiences may have potential for reprogramming the socially anxious brain. Certainly, single administrations of oxytocin and testosterone in humans reduce socially fearful, avoidant, and submissive behavior. Such work may ultimately lead to new approaches to the treatment of SAD.

scholarly journals Earliest experience of a relatively rare sound but not a frequent sound causes long term changes in the adult auditory cortex

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muneshwar Mehra ◽  
Adarsh Mukesh ◽  
Sharba Bandyopadhyay
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Cortex ◽  
Developmental Plasticity ◽  
Information Theoretic ◽  
Subplate Neurons ◽  
Cortical Responses ◽  
Long Term Changes ◽  
Layer 4 ◽  
Auditory Experience ◽  
Developmental Windows

AbstractSensory experience during a critical period alters sensory cortical responses and organization. We find that the earliest sound driven activity in the mouse auditory cortex (ACX) starts before ear-canal opening (ECO). Effects of auditory experience before ECO on ACX development are unknown. We find that mouse ACX subplate neurons (SPNs), crucial in thalamocortical maturation, respond to sounds before ECO showing oddball selectivity. Before ECO, SPNs are more selective to oddball sounds in auditory streams than thalamo-recipient layer 4 (L4) neurons and not after ECO. We hypothesize that SPNs’ oddball selectivity can direct development of L4 responses before ECO. Exposing mice before ECO with a rarely occurring tone in a stream of another tone occurring frequently leads to the strengthening of the adult cortical representation of the rare tone, but not that of the frequent tone. Results of control exposure experiments at multiple developmental windows and also with only a single tone corroborate the observations. A computational network model of known thalamic inputs to SPNs and L4 explains the observed developmental plasticity. Information-theoretic analysis with sparse coding assumptions also predicts the observations. Thus, salient low probability sounds in the earliest auditory environment cause long term changes in the ACX.

Behind the stage of a literary text. ‘Custom is despot among men’

2020 ◽  
pp. 63-83
Author(s):  
E. N. Tsimbaeva
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Skeletal System ◽  
World War ◽  
Internal Organs ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
The Past ◽  
Fiction Writers

The article analyzes physical and physiological problems caused by fashionable clothing in the mid-18th to early 20th cc. that shaped people’s appearances and lifestyles in the past. Affecting the skeletal system and the functioning of internal organs and brain in particular and causing various illnesses, these problems went largely unrecognized by contemporaries, including writers, but would inevitably surface in literary works as part and parcel of everyday life. Without understanding their role, one may struggle to comprehend not only plot twists and characters’ motivations but also the mentality of the bygone era as portrayed in fiction. Chronologically, the research covers the period from the mid-18th c. to World War I. The author only focuses on so-called respectable society (a very tentative term that covers members of the aristocracy and other classes with comparable lifestyles), since it was this group which drew the most attention from fiction writers of the period. The scholar chose to concentrate on the kind of daily realia of ‘noble society’ that permeate works by Russian, English, French and, to some extent, German authors, considered most prominent in Europe at the time.

Developmental Plasticity and Evolution

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Jane West-Eberhard
Keyword(s):  
Adaptive Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Developmental Plasticity ◽  
Higher Plants ◽  
Critical Discussion ◽  
Physiological Adaptation ◽  
Modular Organization ◽  
Random Mutation ◽  
Environmental Induction ◽  
Development And Evolution

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.

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