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The Roles of Experience in Different Developmental Information Stage Processes

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Developmental Neurocognition: Speech and Face Processing in the First Year of Life

Part of the book series: NATO ASI Series ((ASID,volume 69))

Abstract

There are at least 3 levels of experience involvement in the specification of connections in the nervous system; connections may be experience-independent, with no detectable influence of experience on their formation, experience-expectant, where synapses are generated in advance of the experience that selects a patterned subset of them for survival, and experience-dependent, the apparent form subserving adult learning and memory, where experience appears to trigger the formation of new connections. Molecular substrates of these three types of synapse formation are probably shared to a great extent, although, when synapses are triggered by experience, there must be regulators of any gene expression involved, structural proteins expressed that can bring about synapse formation, and, we argue, a local marker, that either initiates synaptogenesis or otherwise mediates the interval between nerve cell activity and the subsequent formation of a synapse. We discuss several candidates for these roles that we have studied.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Beckman Institute, University of Illinois, 405 North Mathews, Urbana, Illinois, USA

    W. T. Greenough & A. A. Alcantara

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  1. W. T. Greenough
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  2. A. A. Alcantara
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Experimental Psychology Laboratory, E.H.E.S.S. and C.N.R.S., Paris, France

    Bénédicte de Boysson-Bardies

  2. Development and Cognition Unit, Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, C.N.R.S., Marseille, France

    Scania de Schonen

  3. Psychology Department, SUNY at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York, USA

    Peter Jusczyk

  4. Department of Linguistics, University of Texas, Austin, Texas, USA

    Peter McNeilage

  5. Cognitive Development Unit, MRC, London, UK

    John Morton

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Greenough, W.T., Alcantara, A.A. (1993). The Roles of Experience in Different Developmental Information Stage Processes. In: de Boysson-Bardies, B., de Schonen, S., Jusczyk, P., McNeilage, P., Morton, J. (eds) Developmental Neurocognition: Speech and Face Processing in the First Year of Life. NATO ASI Series, vol 69. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8234-6_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8234-6_1

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