The formation of precise synaptic connections in the developing central nervous system involves activity-dependent control of synaptic strength. Correlated activity between the afferent input and postsynaptic neuron strengthens connections through long-term potentiation (LTP), while uncorrelated synaptic inputs are selectively diminished. In this issue of Neuron, Tao et al. report that LTP in y...

This review provides a synthesis that combines data from classical experimentation and recent advances in our understanding of early eye development. Emphasis is placed on the events that underlie and direct neural retina formation and lens induction. Understanding these events represents a longstanding problem in developmental biology. Early interest can be attributed to the curiosity generate...

objectives: one of the factors predicting language impairments is an early limited lexicon in children. an early limited lexicon can also lead to limited performances in other language areas. this study was aimed to examine receptive and expressive vocabulary in 8-16 month-old children with cleft lip and palate as a predictor of development in other language areas. materials: the macarthur-bate...

The most important ability of the human vision is object recognition, yet it is exactly the less understood aspect of the vision system. Computational models have been helpful in progressing towards an explanation of this obscure cognitive ability, and today it is possible to conceive more refined models, thanks to the new availability of neuroscientific data about the human visual cortex. This...

The heart is the first organ to form during embryogenesis and its circulatory function is critical from early on for the viability of the mammalian embryo. Developmental abnormalities of the heart have also been widely recognized as the underlying cause of many congenital heart malformations. Hence, the developmental mechanisms that orchestrate the formation and morphogenesis of this organ have...

This research explored overextension in the early vocabularies of six children, followed in a language diary study from I; 0 to I; 8. , Results indicated that only one-third of the first 75 words acquired by each child were ever overextended. A small set of high-frequency, early acquired words accounted for a disproportionate number of overextensions. Overextensions were classified into three t...

Category development in early language*

In eukaryotic cells, specific sets of proteins associate with genome DNA and mRNA to package them into nucleosomes and mRNPs, respectively. Among the crucial functions of these DNAor RNA-protein complexes are to protect the nucleic acids incorporated into the complexes from attack by nucleases, to package them into compact particles and, most importantly, to regulate gene expression through com...

Comprehensive clinical studies show that adverse conditions in early life can severely impact the developing brain and increase vulnerability to mood disorders later in life. During early postnatal life the brain exhibits high plasticity which allows environmental signals to alter the trajectories of rapidly developing circuits. Adversity in early life is able to shape the experience-dependent ...