Human Capital Investment and the Gender Division of Labor in a Brawn-Based Economy.

We use a model of human capital investment and activity choice to explain facts describing gender differentials in the levels and returns to human capital investments. These include the higher return to and level of schooling, the small effect of healthiness on wages, and the large effect of healthiness on schooling for females relative to males. The model incorporates gender differences in the level and responsiveness of brawn to nutrition in a Roy-economy setting in which activities reward skill and brawn differentially.

Recovery from brain injury in animals: relative efficacy of environmental enrichment, physical exercise or formal training (1990-2002).

In the 1960s, it was shown for the first time that enriched housing enhances functional recovery after brain damage. During the 1970s and 1980s, many findings similar to this initial one have been reported, enlarging greatly its generality. Over the last 13 years, many different kinds of brain damage were modelled in animals or even directly studied in humans.

Effects of differential experience on the brain and behavior.

This review of plasticity of brain and behavior ranges from examples of plasticity restricted to an early critical period to other examples that show lifelong plasticity, but these two polar opposites are far from covering the field. Rather, it appears that there are a number of patterns by which different measures of plasticity vary as a function of age. Even in cases that indicate the existence of a critical period for development of neural circuits and of behavior, it is not yet possible to define the period exactly, because different methods yield different results, and much parametric work remains to be done.