"American Plan" and "European Plan"
The "American plan" and "European Plan" were proposed by Sydney Brenner as competing models for the way brain cells determine their neural functions.
According to the European plan (sometimes referred to as the British plan), the function of cells is determined by its genetic lineage. Therefore, a mother cell with a specific function (for instance, interpreting visual information) would create daughter cells with similar functions.
According to the American plan, a brain cell's function is determined by the function of its neighbors after cell migration. If a cell migrates to an area in the visual cortex, the cell will adopt the function of its neighboring visual cortex cells, guided by chemical and axonal signals from these cells. If the same cell migrates to the auditory cortex, it would develop functions related to hearing, regardless of its genetic lineage.
Read more about this topic: Sydney Brenner
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—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)