Abstract
The concepts “prespecification” and “plasticity” are often ill-defined: to make them useful, exact criteria as well as the stage of development to which they are applied have to be stated precisely. For instance, plasticity often refers to functional adaptation. But our discussion will deal only with structural modifiability. The term “prespecification” conveys the notion that a developmental process, or phenotypic characteristics of a particular neuron strain, are irreversibly programmed or determined from an early stage on. The neural tube which gives rise to the entire central nervous system represents an early stage. One can inquire whether the undifferentiated neural tube of a 2-day chick embryo has acquired already the regional specification for cervical, brachial, thoracic, lumbar sectors which can be characterized by several criteria in later stages. One widely used test for specification is the transplantation experiment borrowed from general experimental embryology. If prospective brachial and cervical or brachial and thoracic segments are exchanged in the 2-day neural tube, they differentiate according to their site of origin, rather than the site of implantation, as shown, for instance, by the presence or absence of a lateral motor column in the transplant (B. Wenger, 1951). Another criterion would be the circuitry for coordinated limb movements which develops only at limb levels. Transplantation of the brachial neural tube to the lumbar level in 2-day chick embryos results in the performance of synchronus leg movements akin to wing flapping. Alternating movements were never observed; hence segmental specification defined by this criterion is also fixed at that stage (Narayanan and Hamburger, 1971).
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Hamburger, V. (1990). Prespecification and Plasticity in Neurogenesis. In: Neuroembryology. Birkhäuser, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-6743-5_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-6743-5_6
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