Birkbeck,University of London.
Dev Psychopathol. 2015 May;27(2):425-42. doi: 10.1017/S0954579415000073.
Resilience and adaptation in the face of early genetic or environmental risk has become a major interest in child psychiatry over recent years. However, we still remain far from an understanding of how developing human brains as a whole adapt to the diffuse and widespread atypical synaptic function that may be characteristic of some common developmental disorders. The first part of this paper discusses four types of whole-brain adaptation in the face of early risk: redundancy, reorganization, niche construction, and adjustment of developmental rate. The second part of the paper applies these adaptation processes specifically to autism. We speculate that key features of autism may be the end result of processes of early brain adaptation, rather than the direct consequences of ongoing neural pathology.
近年来，面对早期遗传或环境风险时的韧性和适应能力已成为儿童精神病学的主要关注点。然而，我们仍然远未了解整个发育中的大脑如何适应可能是某些常见发育障碍特征的弥散和广泛的非典型突触功能。本文第一部分讨论了早期风险下大脑整体适应的四种类型：冗余、重组、生态位构建和发育速度调整。本文第二部分将这些适应过程专门应用于自闭症。我们推测，自闭症的关键特征可能是早期大脑适应过程的最终结果，而不是持续神经病理学的直接后果。
