The Neurobiology of Individuality | The Scientist Magazine® - 0 views
www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/35514/title/The-Neurobiology-of-Individuality/
individuality scientist research knowledge
shared by grayton downing on 24 Oct 13
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a group of genetically identical mice lived in the same complex enclosure for 3 months, individuals that explored the environment more broadly grew more new neurons than less adventurous mice, according to a study
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s a clear and quantitative demonstration that individual differences in behavior can be reflected in individual differences in brain plasticity
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often tried to tackle the question of how individual differences in behavior and personality develop in terms of the interactions between genes and environment. “But there is next to nothing [known] about the neurobiological mechanisms underlying individuality
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phenomenon is to look at brain plasticity, or how the brain’s structure and function change over time. Plasticity is hard to study, however, because it mostly takes place at the synaptic level
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found that individual differences in exploratory behavior correlated with individual differences in the numbers of new neurons generated. “To out knowledge, it’s the first example of a direct link between individual behavior and individual brain plasticity,” Kempermann said.
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could help explain why human identical twins raised in the same family end up with different personalities. “These kinds of processes are notoriously difficult to study in people, because we can’t control human environments experimentally,” said Eric Turkheimer, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, who studies how differences in the personalities of identical twins emerge over time. “That’s why an animal model is so important.”
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with an animal model to help address the ways living our lives make us who we are,” said Kempermann. “So we have touched on an approach that allows us start to get the small part of an answer to a very big question.”