In visual cortex monocular deprivation (MD) during a critical period (CP) reduces the ability of the deprived eye to activate cortex, but the underlying cellular plasticity mechanisms are incompletely understood. Here we show that MD reduces the intrinsic excitability of layer 5 (L5) pyramidal neurons and enhances long-term potentiation of intrinsic excitability (LTP-IE). Further, MD and LTP-IE...

It is possible to comprehend speech and discriminate languages by viewing a speaker's articulatory movements. Transcranial magnetic stimulation studies have shown that viewing speech enhances excitability in the articulatory motor cortex. Here, we investigated the specificity of this enhanced motor excitability in native and non-native speakers of English. Both groups were able to discriminate ...

We used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to clarify how non-verbal emotionally-characterized sounds modulate the excitability of the corticospinal motor tract (CST). While subjects were listening to sounds (monaurally and binaurally), single TMS pulses were delivered to either left or right primary motor cortex (M1), and electromyographic activities were recorded from the contralateral a...

The entorhinal cortex (EC) provides the predominant excitatory drive to the hippocampal CA1 and subicular neurons in chronic epilepsy. Discerning the mechanisms underlying signal integration within EC neurons is essential for understanding network excitability alterations involving the hippocampus during epilepsy. Twenty-four hours following a single seizure episode when there were no behaviora...

Key points † Intraoperative neuromonitoring can be affected by specific general anaesthetics. † Changes in axonal excitability of primary sensory afferents with propofol and sevoflurane were investigated using threshold tracking technique. † Both anaesthetics similarly affected nerve excitability to a small but significant extent. † Possible mechanisms include direct anaesthetic effects on neur...

Several characteristic phenomena of excitability were found in the cardiac muscle during the relative refractory period when the excitability was studied by electrical stimulations with surface electrodes.According to BROOKS and his associates1,2,15)and subsequently by HOFFMAN et al.7,8),CRANEFIELD et al.3),and VAN Dum et al.20)the characteristic aspects of the excitability of cardiac muscles d...

Developmental dyslexia (decoding-based reading disorder; RD) is a complex trait with multifactorial origins at the genetic, neural, and cognitive levels. There is evidence that low-level sensory-processing deficits precede and underlie phonological problems, which are one of the best-documented aspects of RD. RD is also associated with impairments in integrating visual symbols with their corres...

Phosphene sensation is commonly used to measure cortical excitability during transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) of the occipital cortex. However, some individuals lack this perception, and the reason for it is still unknown. In this work, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to detect brain activation during local TMS of the occipital cortex in twelve healthy subjects. We f...

The development of maximal velocity and power in muscle depends on the ability to transmit action potentials (AP) at very high frequencies up to about 400 Hz. However, for every AP there is a small loss of K(+) to the interstitium, which during intense exercise, may build up to a point where excitability is reduced, thus limiting the intensity of further exercise. It is still unknown how the mu...

Adult-born dentate granule neurons contribute to memory encoding functions of the dentate gyrus (DG) such as pattern separation. However, local circuit-mechanisms by which adult-born neurons partake in this process are poorly understood. Computational, neuroanatomical and electrophysiological studies suggest that sparseness of activation in the granule cell layer (GCL) is conducive for pattern ...