Dowling The Great Brain Debate

Nature or Nurture?
Course Book
ISBN: 978-1-4008-4138-7
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 200 Seiten

Reihe: Science Essentials

Whether our personality, intelligence, and behavior are more likely to be shaped by our environment or our genetic coding is not simply an idle question for today's researchers. There are tremendous consequences to understanding the crucial role that environment and genes each play. How we raise and educate our children, how we treat various mental diseases or conditions, how we care for our elderly--these are just some of the issues that can be informed by a better understanding of brain development.

In The Great Brain Debate, the eminent neuroscience researcher John Dowling looks at these and other important issues. The work that is being done on the connection between the brain and vision, as well as the ways in which our brains help us learn new languages, are particularly revealing. From this groundbreaking new research, Dowling explains startling new insights into how the brain functions and how it can (or cannot) be molded and changed. By studying the brain across the spectrum of our lives, from infancy through adulthood and into old age, Dowling shows the ways in which both nature and nurture play key roles over the course of a human lifetime.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Dowling, John E.

Fachgebiete

• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction 1

Part I: The Developing Brain

Chapter 1: Building a Brain 7

Chapter 2: Maturing a Brain 33

Chapter 3: Developing Behaviors 57

Part II: The Adult Brain

Chapter 4: Teaching Older Dogs New Tricks 83

Chapter 5: Controversies: New Neurons and Genes and Behavior 111

Part III: The Aging Brain

Chapter 6: Is Aging of the Brain a Disease? 139

Conclusions (and Speculations) 161

Further Reading 175

Figure Credits 177

Index 179

Über Autor(innen)

John E. Dowling is the Llura and Gordon Gund Professor of Neurosciences and Harvard College Professor at Harvard University. He has received numerous awards, including the Helen Keller Prize for Vision Research.