Why do sensitive periods exist?

Date

Dec 10, 2018

Time

4:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Speaker

Willem E. Frankenhuis

Affiliation

Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University

Language

en

Main Topic

Biologie

Other Topics

Biologie, Medizin

Host

Prof. Gerd Kempermann

Description

AbstractSensitive periods are increasingly well-understood at the neural-physiological level. However, we know little about the evolutionary selection pressures that produce sensitive periods. In this talk, I will present a formal modeling approach to studying the evolution of sensitive periods. We model development as a specialization process during which individuals incrementally adapt to local environmental conditions, while sampling imperfect cues to the environmental state. We first compute optimal developmental mechanisms (i.e., decision rules) for a range of ecological conditions. Then we expose these mechanisms to experiences to obtain developmental trajectories and distributions of mature phenotypes. Our results show that genetically identical individuals who develop in the same environment diverge phenotypically due to stochastic variation in experiences. Moreover, the stability of individual differences increases with advancing age. These findings dovetail with empirical observations in rodents made at the CRT. 5 most recent papersFawcett, T. W., & Frankenhuis, W. E. (2015). Adaptive explanations for sensitive windows in development. Frontiers in Zoology, 12 (Suppl. 1): S3. Frankenhuis, W. E., Nettle, D., & McNamara, J. M. (2018). Echoes of early life: Recent insights from mathematical modeling. Child Development, 89, 1504-1518. Frankenhuis, W. E., & Panchanathan, K. (2011). Balancing sampling and specialization: An adaptationist model of incremental development. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 278, 3558-3565. Panchanathan, K., & Frankenhuis, W. E. (2016). The evolution of sensitive periods in a model of incremental development. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 283, 20152439. Stamps, J., & Frankenhuis, W. E. (2016). Bayesian models of development. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 31, 260-268.

Links

• to announcement of the organizer

Last modified: Dec 10, 2018, 1:10:07 AM