Loss of sensory input from peripheral organ damage, sensory deprivation, or brain damage can result in adaptive or maladaptive changes in sensory cortex. In previous research, we found that auditory cortical tuning and tonotopy were impaired by cross-modal invasion of visual inputs. Sensory deprivation is typically associated with a loss of inhibition. To determine whether inhibitory plasticity...

To date, no detailed examination of the pattern of change in reaction time performance for different sensory modalities has been conducted across the circadian cycle during sleep deprivation. Therefore, we compared sustained auditory and visual attention performance during 40h of sleep deprivation assessing multiple metrics of auditory and visual psychomotor vigilance tasks (PVT). Forty healthy...

background: the rodent somatosensory barrel cortex is an ideal model to examine the effect of experience-dependent plasticity on developing brain circuitry. sensory deprivation such as whisker deprivation may affect neuroanatomical aspects of the brain during developmental processes. the present study designed to investigate the possible effects of whisker deprivation on the morphometric charac...

Purpose: Comparing the effects of manipulating senses on relative phase transition bimanual coordination pattern of active and inactive women with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Methods: The methodology of this study was repeated-measures design. Study participants comprised 10 active women and 10 inactive women with multiple sclerosis who voluntarily participated in this experiment. The participant...

Synaesthesia is an unusual perceptual experience in which an inducer stimulus triggers a percept in a different domain in addition to its own. To explore the conditions under which synaesthesia evolves, we studied a neuronal network model that represents two recurrently connected neural systems. The interactions in the network evolve according to learning rules that optimize sensory sensitivity...

Disentangling the effects of sensory and cognitive factors on neural reorganization is fundamental for establishing the relationship between plasticity and functional specialization. Auditory deprivation in humans provides a unique insight into this problem, because the origin of the anatomical and functional changes observed in deaf individuals is not only sensory, but also cognitive, owing to...

The American journal oj Occupatiol/o/ Therap)' Cognitive impairment is a major cause of institu.tionalization among older adults. Approximately two thirds of nursing home residents exhibit moderate to extreme dementia (Publ ic Health Service, 1978) Judging from the literature, the most common form of treatment provided for such regressed persons is reality orientation (Holden & Woods, 1982). Al...