Search results for "Neuroplasticity"
showing 10 items of 136 documents
Brain Structure MR Imaging Methods: Morphometry and Tractography
2013
Brain morphology is in constant change from the very beginning of the neurodevelopment in human beings. The characterization of the brain morphology and its biological implications on a specific subject is a complex task which requires efficient computational approaches. Radiology has traditionally assessed the main brain changes in different alterations from a macroscopic point of view, thus, not considering subtle changes as a results of neuronal plasticity. In conjunction with functional information, the structural neuroimaging methods have established as the key in the diagnosis of several central nervous system disorders, including tumours, neurodegenerative disorders and psychiatric d…
Physical exercise neuroprotects ovariectomized 3xTg-AD mice through BDNF mechanisms.
2014
Postmenopausal women may be more vulnerable to cognitive loss and Alzheimer's disease (AD) than premenopausal women because of their deficiency in estrogens, in addition to their usually older age. Aerobic physical exercise has been proposed as a therapeutic approach for maintaining health and well-being in postmenopausal women, and for improving brain health and plasticity in populations at high risk for AD. To study the neuroprotective mechanisms of physical exercise in a postmenopausal animal model, we submitted previously ovariectomized, six-month old non-transgenic and 3xTg-AD mice to three months of voluntary exercise in a running wheel. At nine months of age, we observed lower grip s…
Complex regional pain syndrome: An optimistic perspective.
2014
Complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) presents with clinical symptoms that can no longer be explained by the initial trauma, including pain, sensory, motor, and trophic symptoms, and impairment of autonomic control of the limb. These symptoms spread distally and go beyond single nerve innervation territories. Typically, the symptoms change through the course of CRPS as a result of the varying pathophysiology. Diagnosis is made clinically after the rigorous elimination of other possible causes, and 3-phase bone scintigraphy can be a useful tool for confirming CRPS. In acute stages, inflammatory symptoms prevail and should be treated with anti-inflammatory agents (steroids), bisphosphonates, …
Music Training Enhances Rapid Neural Plasticity of N1 and P2 Source Activation for Unattended Sounds
2012
Neurocognitive studies have demonstrated that long-term music training enhances the processing of unattended sounds. It is not clear, however, whether music training also modulates rapid (within tens of minutes) neural plasticity for sound encoding. To study this phenomenon, we examined whether adult musicians display enhanced rapid neural plasticity compared to non-musicians. More specifically, we compared the modulation of P1, N1, and P2 responses to standard sounds between four unattended passive blocks. Among the standard sounds, infrequently presented deviant sounds were presented (the so-called oddball paradigm). In the middle of the experiment (after two blocks), an active task was p…
Neuroplasticity in the Adjustment to Blindness
1999
Loss of vision due to injury to the eyes results in deafferentation of very large areas of the human cortex and poses striking demands on other sensory systems to adjust to blindness in a society that heavily relies on vision. Blind subjects need to extract crucial spatial information from touch and hearing. To accomplish this, plastic trans-modal changes appear to take place by which a larger area of the sensorimotor cortex is devoted to the representation of the reading finger in Braille readers, and parts of the former visual cortex are recruited for the processing of tactile and auditory information.
Anodal transcranial direct current stimulation over the right hemisphere improves auditory comprehension in a case of dementia.
2017
Background Noninvasive transcranial stimulation methods have been increasingly employed in order to improve cognitive performance in neurological patients. In previous studies with both stroke patients and healthy subjects, noninvasive stimulation of temporal-parietal regions and their homologue produced an improvement in linguistic tasks. Objective The aim of the current study was to evaluate if anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over Brodmann areas 39/40 (angular and supramarginal gyri) could promote the recovery of linguistic functions, in particular comprehension and naming, in a single patient affected by dementia. Methods Three preliminary explorative single session…
P258 Combining tDCS with prismatic adaptation for non invasive neuromodulation of the motor cortex
2017
Introduction Prismatic adaptation (PA) shifts visual field laterally and induces lateralized deviations of spatial attention. Recently, it has been suggested that prismatic goggles are also able to modulate brain excitability ( Magnani, 2014 ), with cognitive after-effects documented even in tasks not necessarily spatial in nature ( Oliveri, 2013 ). Objectives The aim of the present study was to test whether prisms can modulate motor cortical excitability similarly as anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) does; to test whether neuromodulatory effects obtained from tDCS and prismatic goggles could interact and induce homeostatic changes in brain excitability. Materials and me…
P 96. Prismatic lenses as a novel tool to directionally manipulate motor cortex excitability: Evidence from paired-pulse TMS
2013
Introduction Prismatic adaptation (PA) is a visuo-motor procedure requiring participants to adapt to prismatic lenses shifting the visual scene horizontally. Such an adaptation produces a phenomenon called “after-effect”, opposite to the side of lenses deviation. The after-effect has been frequently associated with a shift of spatial attention in the same direction and with a restoration of hemispatial neglect symptoms. PA has captured the interest of neuroscientists in the last decades, since it affects high-order spatial cognition even thought consisting of low-level visuo-motor processes. Objectives Despite a huge literature on this procedure, the basic neural processes related to PA and…
Neural Correlates of Age-Related Changes in Precise Grip Force Regulation: A Combined EEG-fNIRS Study
2020
Motor control is associated with suppression of oscillatory activity in alpha (8–12 Hz) and beta (12–30 Hz) ranges and elevation of oxygenated hemoglobin levels in motor-cortical areas. Aging leads to changes in oscillatory and hemodynamic brain activity and impairments in motor control. However, the relationship between age-related changes in motor control and brain activity is not yet fully understood. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate age-related and task-complexity-related changes in grip force control and the underlying oscillatory and hemodynamic activity. Sixteen younger [age (mean ± SD) = 25.4 ± 1.9, 20–30 years] and 16 older (age = 56.7 ± 4.7, 50–70 years) healthy men were…
Chapter 31 Transcranial magnetic stimulation studies of contralesional space attention deficits
2002
Publisher Summary The power of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to disrupt and modulate the neural activity in focal brain regions has provided researchers in this field a promising tool to empirically test specific neuropsychological models and constructs of contralesional space attention deficits. A group of studies has used TMS to transiently disrupt the cortical activity of the focal brain areas in normal subjects to replicate the effects of neurological lesions. This chapter discusses a number of studies, using single-pulse, paired-TMS, and repetitive TMS (rTMS) and different experimental paradigms that show how this technique can be of fundamental importance, in elucidating the…