Inheritance by Dr. Sharon Moalem is an exceptional book. Dr. Moalem’s goal for writing this book is to convey a new idea of genetics and inheritance to the reader. In middle school and high school we were taught that our genetics comes from our parents and that they are fixed throughout our lifetime, but Dr. Sharon Moalem brings the idea that the environment may alter them. He states that the food we eat and the trauma we endure during life can imprint onto our genes. Dr. Moalem works with rare genetic disorders where he accumulates his knowledge from research to help treat his patients with changing some environmental factors in their lives.
The article I chose is “Penn: Stressed Dads Affect Offspring Brain Development through Sperm MicroRNA” by Katherine Unger Baillie. Tracy L. Bale a professor of neuroscience at Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine and Perelman School of Medicine is leading a study on how the level of stress can affect offspring’s through sperm. Professor Bale researched on male mice, and to elevate their stress levels she exposed them to a predator’s odor such as urine from a fox and/or transferring them to different cages. She then compared the sperm to the unstressed male mice and noticed an increase of nine miRs from the stress exposed mice. miRs prevent RNAs from translating into proteins.
it’s ok, we’re not angry.’” (Benway 355). My topic of inquiry relates the effects of both genetics and upbringing on childhood development. This quote shows the correlation that parenting styles do affect how a child's personality develops, and genetics are not the only factor in personality development.
Dr. Rettew connects to class discussions and readings on shared and unshared environmental influences, evocative gene environment correlation, temperament, and the goodness-of-fit. Twins that with unshared environmental influences, such as different placentas, could adapt different temperaments (Berk, 2009). Also, twins that have been adopted into separate families could have different personality traits because they lived in completely different environments their whole life, even if they shared environmental influences of the same placenta (Berk, 2009). With an evocative gene environment correlation, a child’s genotype could draw in a certain type of environment, such as babies who appear more attractive will receive more attention (Berk, 2009). The type of attention a child gets could affect its temperament.
Isabelle was lucky she had her mother even though she was deaf. The mother’s companionship and conforming made her capable of progress. Thirdly, the experiment of the Harlow Monkeys, shows the importance of socialization in animals. The experiment consisted in placing baby monkeys taken away from their biological mother and given then the choice of wire mothers with food or cloth mothers without food. The monkeys preferred the soft face mother.
Our mental health can also be shape by epigenetics , according to ssegment from a June 2008 lecture given by Dr. Moshe Szyf, Professor of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at McGill University, expains how childhood abuse ends in suicide 100% of the cases, while the control died for other reasons , mostly car accidents that did not had any report of child abuses. This is an environmental factor that leaves an imprint RN promoter and the hippocampus because the methyl levels are higher, leading this people to take this actions .In a comparison of suicide victims who were abused or not, only the abused victims had an epigenetic tag on the GR
Even though there are many philosophical theories which explains how parenting or child rearing works. The Tabula rasa theory is most famous and well accepted in most of philosophy filed. The Tabular Rasa which literally means the black slate or an absence of perceived ideas theory gives more epilation how children are born with a brain that is nothing on it. According
Although twins have similar DNA, their epigenetics can be completely different. By researching twins and the possible causes of making them unique from each other, scientists have learned that many things can affect a person’s epigenetics. Some things listed throughout the epigenetics Ted Talk that affect children before and after birth would be stress, diet, drugs and smoking. These outcomes mentioned in the video can affect a child by causing asthma, obesity and or cardio vascular disease.
Furthermore, a brain study done while she slept showed abnormal brain activity indicative of mental retardation. Strangely enough, this did not correlate with evidence that her mental development progressed every year. All of these experiments led to future research involving brain scans which revealed that the left part of the brain cortex had shrunk and disconnected due to lack of stimulation. It was also revealed that the brains of feral children were shrunken and malformed. It was also apparent that the severity of this malformation directly correlated with the age of the child at which the neglect began, and length of time the abuse went on.
Both Harlow (1905) and Bowlby (1907) identified that the first attachment a child will form will be with their mother (McLeod, 2009). As Bowlby (1907) suggests, the separation could affect Yana’s ability to react successfully to demands she faces in adulthood because the biological need for the maternal attachment was broken- this could affect her maternal instincts and ability to form relationships (Bowlby, 1958). Similar to Spitz (1887), Rutter (1933) described this loss as maternal deprivation which he suggested may lead to lack of intellectual stimulation. Froebel’s (1782) theory supports the affect the loss of the mother has on a child’s development, particularly their emotional development, identifying that the mother plays an important role in a child’s education (Flanagan, 1999). Yana’s mother will not be involved in her education, nevertheless, it is uncertain whether her mother would have provided adequate support for Yana due to the language barrier.
Life span developmental psychology is the field of psychology that involves the examination of both constancy and change in human behavior across the life span, that is, from conception to death. The focus of the study of developmental psychology is to further our knowledge of how we evolve over our entire life span. The study of development is possible within a range of topics in modern psychology like social psychology, cognitive psychology, abnormal psychology, comparative psychology, and neuro psychology. Child development is one of the studies in developmental psychology. The study of children is important because it has the potential to inform us about the nature of human development.
Epigenetics is the study of how some circumstances in life can cause genes to be either turned on or turned off. Circumstances like where one lives, teratogens (environmental toxins) (Siegler et al., 2014), or what one eats can potentially cause modifications to the genes that either turn on or off specific genes over a period of time. In other words, people often think their “fixed” a birth, however experiences play a vital role in gene expression. Epigenetics can affect development because depending on one’s life experiences it can change the course for better or worse.
According to his theory, individuals are born without built-in knowledge. Everybody learns through experience, perception and parental guidance. One answer to providing more effective circumstances to children could be a much more self-critical, reflective and differentiated strategies of instruction developed through meaningful observations, noticing and recognizing what is important, influencing and significant to the child and about the child, and reacting in a supportive way. This kind of healthy interaction between individual child’s genes and the environmental context in which they develop would mean a good initial start. Moreover, chances of positive pathways in life seem to be enhanced by heredity vulnerabilities and complex behaviors.
Throughout this whole semester there has been many important concepts about the development of life and how we can analyze the growth of one’s mind after birth. Psychologists make these observations closely in order to have a better understanding of how individual’s mindsets process information. In the textbook “Life-Span Development, 15th Edition” by John W. Santrock, he elaborates on how the brain works in different stages of life. For each stage of life there are different components to how the brain and the human body function properly. In chapter five of the book it talks about the cognitive development in infancy and how through this stage infants are starting to explore.
In the former years there has been continuous debate pertaining to the factors that influence a child’s development. Some say that child development is influenced by genetics, also known as nature. While others are certain that despite your genetics, environmental influence is the most important determinate. I on the other hand, say that nature and nurture are inseparable constructs of prenatal development. Research done on teratogens, prenatal nutrition, and Down syndrome support this claim.
