The limits of brain determinacy.


Autoria(s): Clarke P.G.
Data(s)

2012

Resumo

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.

Identificador

http://serval.unil.ch/?id=serval:BIB_ABD3A00DDC81

isbn:1471-2954 (Electronic)

pmid:22298846

doi:10.1098/rspb.2011.2629

isiid:000301981300001

Idioma(s)

en

Fonte

Proceedings. Biological Sciences / the Royal Society, vol. 279, no. 1734, pp. 1665-1674

Palavras-Chave #Animals; Brain/embryology; Environment; Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental; Humans; Neurons/cytology; Noise; Stochastic Processes
Tipo

info:eu-repo/semantics/review

article