Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 2B4, Canada.
Trends Neurosci. 2010 Apr;33(4):183-92. doi: 10.1016/j.tins.2010.01.003. Epub 2010 Feb 10.
To successfully interact with their environments, developing organisms need to correctly process sensory information and generate motor outputs appropriate to their size and structure. Patterned sensory experience has long been known to induce various forms of developmental plasticity that ultimately shape mature neural circuits. These same types of plasticity also allow developing organisms to respond appropriately to the external world by dynamically adapting neural circuit function to ongoing changes in brain circuitry and sensory input. Recent work on the visual systems of frogs and fish has provided an unprecedented view into how visual experience dynamically affects circuit function at many levels, ranging from gene expression to network function, ultimately leading to system-wide functional adaptations.
为了成功地与环境互动，发育中的生物体需要正确处理感觉信息并生成与其大小和结构相适应的运动输出。长期以来，人们一直知道，有规律的感觉体验会引发各种形式的发育可塑性，最终塑造成熟的神经回路。这些相同类型的可塑性还使发育中的生物体能够通过动态地适应大脑回路和感觉输入的持续变化来对外部世界做出适当的反应。最近对青蛙和鱼类的视觉系统的研究提供了一个前所未有的视角，了解视觉体验如何在多个层次上动态地影响回路功能，从基因表达到网络功能，最终导致整个系统的功能适应。
