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One-generation Lamarckism: The role of environment in genetic development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 December 2007

Bruce Bridgeman
Bruce Bridgeman
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064. [email protected]://people.ucsc.edu/~bruceb/index.php?Home
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Abstract

Environment can provide information used in development – information that can appear to be genetically given and that was previously assumed to be so. Examples include growth of the eye until it achieves good focus, and structuring of receptive fields in the visual cortex by environmental information. The process can be called one-generation Lamarckism because information acquired from the environment is used to structure the organism and because the capacity to acquire this information is inherited.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , August 2007 , pp. 367 - 368
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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References

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