Evan Balaban - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Evan Balaban

Proceedings. 2005 IEEE International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, 2005.

Innervation of the visual midbrain by axons from the retina can be described as a stochastic mapp... more Innervation of the visual midbrain by axons from the retina can be described as a stochastic mapping process that maintains topography and polarity between the two regions. Previous work has identified a number of mechanisms that insure proper guidance of the axons. In the current report, we combine three of these mechanisms, servomechanical guidance with local optimum rules, axonal competition, and Hebbian plasticity. Although each of these separate processes are stochastic and therefore subject to imprecision, their combination guides growth cones to precise termination points.

Page 205. 11 Aggression, Biology, and Context Dejd-Vu Al l Over Again? Rebecca M. Young and Evan ... more Page 205. 11 Aggression, Biology, and Context Dejd-Vu Al l Over Again? Rebecca M. Young and Evan Balaban " We have probably already found the genotype that, in a statistical sense, predicts violent crime better than any gene to be discovered in the future. ...

... H. Poole Kenya Wildlife Service, PO Box 40241, Nairobi, Kenya Marilyn B. Renfree Department o... more ... H. Poole Kenya Wildlife Service, PO Box 40241, Nairobi, Kenya Marilyn B. Renfree Department of Zoology, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria ... meiosis, in which the chromosomes in the diploid germ cells exchange genes by crossing over and then shuffle the maternal ...

Politics and the Life Sciences, Mar 1, 1996

Journal of Neurogenetics, 1996

... Specific problems of technique and interpretation with studies manipulat-ing candidate genes ... more ... Specific problems of technique and interpretation with studies manipulat-ing candidate genes have been well described by Gerlai (1996a,b), Crawley Page 14. 14 E. BALABAN ei al. (1996), Lathe (1966), Crusio (1996), and Morris and Nosten-Bertrand (1996). ...

Proceedings. 2005 IEEE International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, 2005., Jan 5, 2006

Science in Context, 1998

The Argument Eugenics, in whatever form it may be articulated, is based on the idea that phenotyp... more The Argument Eugenics, in whatever form it may be articulated, is based on the idea that phenotypic characteristics of particular individuals can be predicted in advance. This paper argues that biology's capacity to predict many of the characteristics exhibited by an individual, especially behavioral or cognitive attributes, will always be very limited. This stems from intrinsic limitations to the methodology for relating genotypes to phenotypes, and from the nature of developmental processes which intervene between genotypes and phenotypes. While genetic studies may generate valid population predictions for conditions which impact human health, neither genetics nor developmental biology are likely to generate useful individual predictions about variation in non-disease-related human behavioral and cognitive phenotypes in the foreseeable future.

Elsevier eBooks, 2001

‘Neurogenetics’ refers to the study of the development and/or function of the nervous system usin... more ‘Neurogenetics’ refers to the study of the development and/or function of the nervous system using identifiable gene variants. The nervous system is where evolution, development, and individual experience combine to produce behaviors at the level of a whole organism. Thus, neurogenetics includes the study of the behavioral consequences of gene variants that affect nervous system development and/or function. Three major approaches to neurogenetic studies (medical, developmental, and behavioral) are characterized. Methods for quantifying behavior in a biological context are introduced (measuring motoric behaviors directly versus studying behaviors that must be indirectly assessed via inferential linkages; assessing behaviors within individuals as versus within groups of individuals), and the ways that behavioral quantification methods constrain biological studies are indicated. The dominant designs used in current neurogenetic research are described (correlative and manipulative), and their limitations are briefly considered. Promising future directions in neurogenetic research are identified, together with a discussion of the new kinds of information they are likely to yield.

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Jul 1, 2015

The mechanisms underlying perceptual adaptation to severely spectrally-distorted speech were stud... more The mechanisms underlying perceptual adaptation to severely spectrally-distorted speech were studied by training participants to comprehend spectrally-rotated speech, which is obtained by inverting the speech spectrum. Spectral-rotation produces severe distortion confined to the spectral domain while preserving temporal trajectories. During five 1-hour training sessions, pairs of participants attempted to extract spoken messages from the spectrally-rotated speech of their training partner. Data on training-induced changes in comprehension of spectrally-rotated sentences and identification/discrimination of spectrally-rotated phonemes were used to evaluate the plausibility of three different classes of underlying perceptual mechanisms: (1) phonemic remapping (the formation of new phonemic categories that specifically incorporate spectrally-rotated acoustic information); (2) experience-dependent generation of a perceptual "inverse-transform" that compensates for spectral-rotation; and (3) changes in cue weighting (the identification of sets of acoustic cues least affected by spectral-rotation, followed by a rapid shift in perceptual emphasis to favour those cues, combined with the recruitment of the same type of "perceptual filling-in" mechanisms used to disambiguate speech-in-noise). Results exclusively support the third mechanism, which is the only one predicting that learning would specifically target temporally-dynamic cues that were transmitting phonetic information most stably in spite of spectral-distortion. No support was found for phonemic remapping or for inverse-transform generation.

Developmental Neurobiology, 2021

Mammalian TRPC5 channels are predominantly expressed in the brain, where they increase intracellu... more Mammalian TRPC5 channels are predominantly expressed in the brain, where they increase intracellular Ca2+ and induce depolarization. Because they augment presynaptic vesicle release, cause persistent neural activity, and show constitutive activity, TRPC5s could play a functional role in late developmental brain events. We used immunohistochemistry to examine TRPC5 in the chick embryo brain between 8 and 20 days of incubation, and provide the first detailed description of their distribution in birds and in the whole brain of any animal species. Stained areas substantially increased between E8 and E16, and staining intensity in many areas peaked at E16, a time when chick brains first show organized patterns of whole‐brain metabolic activation like what is seen consistently after hatching. Areas showing cell soma staining match areas showing Trpc5 mRNA or protein in adult rodents (cerebral cortex, hippocampus, amygdala, cerebellar Purkinje cells). Chick embryos show protein staining in the optic tectum, cerebellar nuclei, and several brainstem nuclei; equivalent areas in the Allen Institute mouse maps express Trpc5 mRNA. The strongest cell soma staining was found in a dorsal hypothalamic area (matching a group of parvicellular arginine vasotocin neurons and a pallial amygdalohypothalamic cell corridor) and the vagal motor complex. Purkinje cells showed strong dendritic staining at E20. Unexpectedly, we also describe neurite staining in the septum, several hypothalamic nuclei, and a paramedian raphe area; the strongest neurite staining was in the median eminence. These novel localizations suggest new unexplored TRPC5 functions, and possible roles in late embryonic brain development.

Acta Psychologica, 2017

Imitation can be realized via two different routes: a direct route that translates visual input i... more Imitation can be realized via two different routes: a direct route that translates visual input into motor output when gestures are meaningless or unknown, and a semantic route for known/meaningful gestures. Young infants show imitative behaviours compatible with the direct route, but little is known about the development of the semantic route, studied here for the first time. The present study examined preschool children (3-5 years of age) imitating gestures that could be transitive or intransitive, and meaningful or meaningless. Both routes for imitation were already present by three years of age, and children were more accurate at imitating meaningful-intransitive gestures than meaningless-intransitive ones; the reverse pattern was found for transitive gestures. Children preferred to use their dominant hand even if they had to anatomically imitate the model to do this, showing that a preference for specular imitation is not exclusive at these ages.

Neuroscience, Jan 4, 2016

Coordinated activity in different sets of widely-projecting neurochemical systems characterize wa... more Coordinated activity in different sets of widely-projecting neurochemical systems characterize waking (W) and sleep (S). How and when this coordination is achieved during development is not known. We used embryos and newborns of a precocial bird species (chickens) to assess developmental activation in different neurochemical systems using cFos expression, which has been extensively employed to examine cellular activation during S and W in adult mammals. Similarly to adult mammals, newborn awake chicks showed significantly higher cFos expression in W-active hypocretin/orexin (H/O), serotonergic Dorsal Raphe, noradrenergic Locus Coeruleus and cholinergic Laterodorsal and Pedunculopontine Tegmental (Ch-LDT/PT) neurons when compared to sleeping chicks. cFos expression was significantly correlated both between these systems, and with the amount of W. S-active melanin-concentrating hormone (MCH) neurons showed very low cFos expression with no difference between sleeping and awake chicks, ...

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A chimera is an organism made up of cells from two or more genetically distinct sources. While so... more A chimera is an organism made up of cells from two or more genetically distinct sources. While some …