15-Oct-2001
Excerpts: We report experiments combining assessment of spatial tactile discrimination behavior and measurements of somatosensory-evoked potentials in human subjects before and after short-term plastic changes to demonstrate a causal link between the degree of altered performance and reorganization. Plastic changes were induced by a Hebbian coactivation protocol of simultaneous pairing of tactile stimuli. As a result of coactivation, spatial discrimination thresholds were lowered; however, the amount of discrimination improvement was variable across subjects. (…) We found that the changes in discrimination abilities could be predicted from the changes in dipole localization.
- Shifts In Cortical Representations Predict Human Discrimination Improvement,Burkhard Pleger, Hubert R. Dinse, Patrick Ragert, Peter Schwenkreis, Jean Pierre Malin, Martin Tegenthoff, PNAS 98: 12255-12260