The limits of brain determinacy.

Details

Serval ID
serval:BIB_ABD3A00DDC81
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Publication sub-type
Review (review): journal as complete as possible of one specific subject, written based on exhaustive analyses from published work.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
The limits of brain determinacy.
Journal
Proceedings. Biological Sciences / the Royal Society
Author(s)
Clarke P.G.
ISSN
1471-2954 (Electronic)
ISSN-L
0962-8452
Publication state
Published
Issued date
2012
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
279
Number
1734
Pages
1665-1674
Language
english
Notes
Publication types: Journal Article ; Review
Abstract
The genes do not control everything that happens in a cell or an organism, because thermally induced molecular movements and conformation changes are beyond genetic control. The importance of uncontrolled events has been argued from the differences between isogenic organisms reared in virtually identical environments, but these might alternatively be attributed to subtle, undetected differences in the environment. The present review focuses on the uncontrolled events themselves in the context of the developing brain. These are considered at cellular and circuit levels because even if cellular physiology was perfectly controlled by the genes (which it is not), the interactions between different cells might still be uncoordinated. A further complication is that the brain contains mechanisms that buffer noise and others that amplify it. The final resultant of the battle between these contrary mechanisms is that developmental stochasticity is sufficiently low to make neurobehavioural defects uncommon, but a chance component of neural development remains. Thus, our brains and behaviour are not entirely determined by a combination of genes-plus-environment.
Keywords
Animals, Brain/embryology, Environment, Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental, Humans, Neurons/cytology, Noise, Stochastic Processes
Pubmed
Web of science
Open Access
Yes
Create date
31/10/2012 14:50
Last modification date
20/08/2019 16:15
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