{"id":7711,"date":"2019-05-22T15:59:49","date_gmt":"2019-05-22T15:59:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/developmental_plasticity\/"},"modified":"2019-05-22T15:59:49","modified_gmt":"2019-05-22T15:59:49","slug":"developmental_plasticity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/developmental_plasticity\/","title":{"rendered":"Developmental plasticity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the context of the nervous system, this refers to the role of neuronal activity and sensory experience in the normal development and maintenance of neuronal anatomy and function. &nbsp;It can also apply to compensatory changes in the nervous system following perturbations at any stage in the life span. &nbsp;For the developmental geneticist, developmental plasticity might be defined as the property or ability of a given genotype to produce different phenotypes in response to distinct environmental conditions. &nbsp;In the past, in developmental (neuro-) psychology, the term was reserved for infant and childhood phases of development, and in particular with reference to the resilience of young children in recovering from brain insults. &nbsp;Evidence now strongly suggests that plasticity is a life-span property of the brain as long as the brain remains healthy through to old-age. &nbsp;This evidence is based on new neural connections continuing to be made (e.g., in the hippocampus) beyond the age of 70 in healthy individuals. &nbsp;Something approaching the term &#8216;plasticity&#8217; seems to have been put forward by the zoologist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.life.illinois.edu\/ib\/443\/lectures\/EvolPhenoPlas.ppt\" class=\"cc-route-enabled\" target=\"_self\" data-editable-link=\"http:\/\/www.life.illinois.edu\/ib\/443\/lectures\/EvolPhenoPlas.ppt&amp;target=_self\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Richard Woltereck <\/a>(1877-1944) in 1909 with his notion of <span class=\"\" style=\"font-style: italic;\">Reaktiosnormin<\/span>, and the first to use the word &#8216;plasticity&#8217; appears to have been the geneticist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.encyclopedia.com\/doc\/1G2-2830903180.html\" class=\"cc-route-enabled\" target=\"_self\" data-editable-link=\"http:\/\/www.encyclopedia.com\/doc\/1G2-2830903180.html&amp;target=_self\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Herman Nilsson-Ehle <\/a>(1873-1949) in 1914 to describe the non-unique relationship of the genotype to the phenotype that he considered to have general adaptive significance.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>See <a href=\"adaptation\">Adaptation<\/a>, <a href=\"brain_sparing\">Brain sparing<\/a>, <a href=\"determination\">Determination<\/a>, <a href=\"equipotentiality\">Equipotentiality<\/a>, <a href=\"ocular_dominance_columns\">Ocular dominance columns<\/a>, <a href=\"plasticity_-neural-\">Plasticity (neural)<\/a><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><\/body><\/html><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the context of the nervous system, this refers to the role of neuronal activity and sensory experience in the normal development and maintenance of neuronal anatomy and function. &nbsp;It can also apply to compensatory changes in the nervous system following perturbations at any stage in the life span. &nbsp;For the developmental geneticist, developmental plasticity &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/developmental_plasticity\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Developmental plasticity&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2],"class_list":["post-7711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-glossary","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7711\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}