Extra Credit Neuroscience Two
Extra Credit Neuroscience Two
Extra Credit Neuroscience Two
Receptive field size and overlap, temporal response, and overall representation size of the
portion of the hand used in the task are all significant correlational changes in the cortical map,
thereby determining a relationship between sensory performance and cortical map changes.
Another study looked at parts of the brain other than the higher cortical centers to see if there
was potential for plasticity. The spinal cord, brain stem, and thalamus were not thought to be
involved in the cortical changes. However, a study done with cats in which sensory manipulation
was used to deprive cells in the dorsal horn of dominant excitatory inputs lead to neurons over
time responding to previously unexpressed inputs, therefore expressing spinal cord involvement3.
In the brain stem, topographic changes were witnessed after dorsal root transections in the
gracile and cuneate nuclei; however, these changes are species-specific and only was applicable
with cats and rats4. With the thalamus, rats, raccoons, and monkeys showed remarkable
potential for change through peripheral denervation5. All of these experiments manipulating
somatosensory contexts showed that cortical changes reflect subcortical modifications. In
addition to these, a study was done with adult brain growth and plasticity in the case of new axon
growth after a large injury. Pons and coworkers performed a dorsal rhizotomy on monkeys
which led to a loss of sensory input from the forelimb. After, microelectrode mapping was used
to study the topographic organization of the somatosensory cortex. This research led to the
2 Recanzone, G. H., Merzenich, M. M., Jenkins, W. M., Grajski, K. A., and Dinse, H. R. (1992)
Topographic reorganization of the hand representation in cortical area 3b of owl monkeys trained in a
frequency-discrimination task. J. Neurophysiol. 67, 10311057.
3 Koerber, H. R., and Brown, P. B. (1995) Quantitative analysis of dorsal horn cell receptive fields
following limited deafferentation. J. Neurophysiol. 74, 20652076.
4 Pettit, M. J., and Schwark, H. D. (1993) Receptive field reorganization in dorsal column nuclei during
temporary denervation. Science 292, 20542056.
5 Garraghty, P. E., and Kaas, J. H. (1991) Functional reorganization in adult monkey thalamus after
peripheral nerve injury. NeuroReport 2, 747750.
discovery that a large zone of cortex which used to represent the forelimb had been completely
reactivated by inputs from the face, determining that adult brains can experience new
reactivation and growth. All of the studies done in the article by Florence and colleagues, despite
their different research methods, alluded to discoveries associated with plasticity in the already
developed brain. As its important to study new axon growth as seen with the research done by
Pons and coworkers, my question is this: in what new ways besides amputation could this occur,
since amputation often contributes to negative phantom pain? In addition, what would the
topographic changes look like in different species of primates or another species all together?