THE PLASTIC HUMAN BRAIN CORTEX
Annual Review of Neuroscience, (2005)Zusammenfassung
Plasticity is an intrinsic property of the human brain and represents
evolution's invention to enable the nervous system to escape the
restrictions of its own genome and thus adapt to environmental pressures,
physiologic changes, and experiences. Dynamic shifts in the strength
of preexisting connections across distributed neural networks, changes
in task-related cortico-cortical and cortico-subcortical coherence
and modifications of the mapping between behavior and neural activity
take place in response to changes in afferent input or efferent demand.
Such rapid, ongoing changes may be followed by the establishment
of new connections through dendritic growth and arborization. However,
they harbor the danger that the evolving pattern of neural activation
may in itself lead to abnormal behavior. Plasticity is the mechanism
for development and learning, as much as a cause of pathology. The
challenge we face is to learn enough about the mechanisms of plasticity
to modulate them to achieve the best behavioral outcome for a given
subject.
Beschreibung
diverse cognitive systems bib