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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Psychology

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Western University

2017

Neuronal Plasticity

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Representation Of Multiple Body Parts In The Missing-Hand Territory Of Congenital One-Handers., Avital Hahamy, Scott N Macdonald, Fiona Van Den Heiligenberg, Paullina Kieliba, Uzay Emir, Rafael Malach, Heidi Johansen-Berg, Peter Brugger, Jody C Culham, Tamar R Makin May 2017

Representation Of Multiple Body Parts In The Missing-Hand Territory Of Congenital One-Handers., Avital Hahamy, Scott N Macdonald, Fiona Van Den Heiligenberg, Paullina Kieliba, Uzay Emir, Rafael Malach, Heidi Johansen-Berg, Peter Brugger, Jody C Culham, Tamar R Makin

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

Individuals born without one hand (congenital one-handers) provide a unique model for understanding the relationship between focal reorganization in the sensorimotor cortex and everyday behavior. We previously reported that the missing hand's territory of one-handers becomes utilized by its cortical neighbor (residual arm representation), depending on residual arm usage in daily life to substitute for the missing hand's function [1, 2]. However, the repertoire of compensatory behaviors may involve utilization of other body parts that do not cortically neighbor the hand territory. Accordingly, the pattern of brain reorganization may be more extensive [3]. Here we studied unconstrained compensatory strategies under …


Bk Channels Mediate Synaptic Plasticity Underlying Habituation In Rats., Tariq Zaman, Cleusa De Oliveira, Mahabba Smoka, Chakravarthi Narla, Michael O Poulter, Susanne Schmid Apr 2017

Bk Channels Mediate Synaptic Plasticity Underlying Habituation In Rats., Tariq Zaman, Cleusa De Oliveira, Mahabba Smoka, Chakravarthi Narla, Michael O Poulter, Susanne Schmid

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

Habituation is a basic form of implicit learning and represents a sensory filter that is disrupted in autism, schizophrenia, and several other mental disorders. Despite extensive research in the past decades on habituation of startle and other escape responses, the underlying neural mechanisms are still not fully understood. There is evidence from previous studies indicating that BK channels might play a critical role in habituation. We here used a wide array of approaches to test this hypothesis. We show that BK channel activation and subsequent phosphorylation of these channels are essential for synaptic depression presumably underlying startle habituation in rats, …


Origins Of Thalamic And Cortical Projections To The Posterior Auditory Field In Congenitally Deaf Cats., Blake E Butler, Nicole Chabot, Andrej Kral, Stephen G Lomber Jan 2017

Origins Of Thalamic And Cortical Projections To The Posterior Auditory Field In Congenitally Deaf Cats., Blake E Butler, Nicole Chabot, Andrej Kral, Stephen G Lomber

Psychology Publications

Crossmodal plasticity takes place following sensory loss, such that areas that normally process the missing modality are reorganized to provide compensatory function in the remaining sensory systems. For example, congenitally deaf cats outperform normal hearing animals on localization of visual stimuli presented in the periphery, and this advantage has been shown to be mediated by the posterior auditory field (PAF). In order to determine the nature of the anatomical differences that underlie this phenomenon, we injected a retrograde tracer into PAF of congenitally deaf animals and quantified the thalamic and cortical projections to this field. The pattern of projections from …