Pallas Sarah L
Neuroscience Institute, Georgia State UniversityAtlanta, GA, United States.
Front Neurosci. 2017 Jun 28;11:344. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2017.00344. eCollection 2017.
Evolution and development are interdependent, particularly with regard to the construction of the nervous system and its position as the machine that produces behavior. On the one hand, the processes directing development and plasticity of the brain provide avenues through which natural selection can sculpt neural cell fate and connectivity, and on the other hand, they are themselves subject to selection pressure. For example, mutations that produce heritable perturbations in neuronal birth and death rates, transcription factor expression, or availability of axon guidance factors within sensory pathways can markedly affect the development of form and thus the function of stimulus decoding circuitry. This evolvability of flexible circuits makes them more adaptable to environmental variation. Although there is general agreement on this point, whether the sensitivity of circuits to environmental influence and the mechanisms underlying development and plasticity of sensory pathways are similar across species from different ecological niches has received almost no attention. Neural circuits are generally more sensitive to environmental influences during an early critical period, but not all niches afford the same access to stimuli in early life. Furthermore, depending on predictability of the habitat and ecological niche, sensory coding circuits might be more susceptible to sensory experience in some species than in others. Despite decades of work on understanding the mechanisms underlying critical period plasticity, the importance of ecological niche in visual pathway development has received little attention. Here, I will explore the relationship between critical period plasticity and ecological niche in mammalian sensory pathways.
进化与发育相互依存，尤其是在神经系统的构建及其作为产生行为的机制的地位方面。一方面，指导大脑发育和可塑性的过程为自然选择塑造神经细胞命运和连接性提供了途径，另一方面，这些过程本身也受到选择压力的影响。例如，在神经元出生率和死亡率、转录因子表达或感觉通路中轴突导向因子的可用性方面产生可遗传扰动的突变，可显著影响形态的发育，进而影响刺激解码电路的功能。这种灵活电路的可进化性使其更能适应环境变化。尽管在这一点上已达成普遍共识，但来自不同生态位的物种的电路对环境影响的敏感性以及感觉通路发育和可塑性的潜在机制是否相似，几乎未受到关注。神经回路通常在早期关键期对环境影响更为敏感，但并非所有生态位在生命早期都能提供相同的刺激获取途径。此外，根据栖息地和生态位的可预测性，某些物种的感觉编码电路可能比其他物种更容易受到感觉经验的影响。尽管数十年来一直在研究关键期可塑性的潜在机制，但生态位在视觉通路发育中的重要性却很少受到关注。在这里，我将探讨哺乳动物感觉通路中关键期可塑性与生态位之间的关系。
