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Neuronal Plasticity
Neuroplasticity, also known as neural plasticity, or brain plasticity, is the ability of neural networks in the brain to change through growth and reorganization. It is when the brain is rewired to function in some way that differs from how it previously functioned. These changes range from individual neuron pathways making new connections, to systematic adjustments like cortical remapping. Examples of neuroplasticity include circuit and network changes that result from learning a new ability, environmental influences, practice, and psychological stress. Neuroplasticity was once thought by neuroscientists to manifest only during childhood, but research in the latter half of the 20th century showed that many aspects of the brain can be altered (or are "plastic") even through adulthood. However, the developing brain exhibits a higher degree of plasticity than the adult brain. Activity-dependent plasticity can have significant implications for healthy development, learning, memory, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neural Circuit
A neural circuit is a population of neurons interconnected by synapses to carry out a specific function when activated. Neural circuits interconnect to one another to form large scale brain networks. Biological neural networks have inspired the design of artificial neural networks, but artificial neural networks are usually not strict copies of their biological counterparts. Early study Early treatments of neural networks can be found in Herbert Spencer's ''Principles of Psychology'', 3rd edition (1872), Theodor Meynert's ''Psychiatry'' (1884), William James' ''Principles of Psychology'' (1890), and Sigmund Freud's Project for a Scientific Psychology (composed 1895). The first rule of neuronal learning was described by Hebb in 1949, in the Hebbian theory. Thus, Hebbian pairing of pre-synaptic and post-synaptic activity can substantially alter the dynamic characteristics of the synaptic connection and therefore either facilitate or inhibit signal transmission. In 1959, the neur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Justo Gonzalo
Justo Gonzalo Rodríguez-Leal (Barcelona, Spain, March 2, 1910 – Madrid, Spain, September 28, 1986), Spanish neuroscientist, after obtaining his bachelor's degree in medicine, he specialized in Austria and Germany (1933–35) with a grant from the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios e Investigaciones Científicas (Council for the Extension of Studies and Scientific Research), and subsequently carried out extensive research on human brain functions based largely on brain injuries from the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). He characterized what he called the ''central syndrome of the cortex'' (multisensory and bilateral disorder caused by a unilateral lesion in a parieto-occipital association area), which he interpreted based on physiological laws of nervous excitability and a model of ''brain dynamics'' where the cortex is conceived as a dynamic functional unit with specificity in gradation, providing a solution to the question of brain localization. He described and interpreted ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Critical Period
In developmental psychology and developmental biology, a critical period is a maturational stage in the lifespan of an organism during which the nervous system is especially sensitive to certain environmental stimuli. If, for some reason, the organism does not receive the appropriate stimulus during this "critical period" to learn a given skill or trait, it may be difficult, ultimately less successful, or even impossible, to develop certain associated functions later in life. Functions that are indispensable to an organism's survival, such as vision, are particularly likely to develop during critical periods. "Critical period" also relates to the ability to acquire one's first language. Researchers found that people who passed the "critical period" would not acquire their first language fluently. Some researchers differentiate between 'strong critical periods' and 'weak critical periods' (a.k.a. 'sensitive' periods) — defining 'weak critical periods' / 'sensitive periods' as mor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Torsten Wiesel
Torsten Nils Wiesel (born 3 June 1924) is a Swedish neurophysiologist. With David H. Hubel, he received the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for their discoveries concerning information processing in the visual system; the prize was shared with Roger W. Sperry for his independent research on the cerebral hemispheres. Career Wiesel was born in Uppsala, Sweden in 1924, the youngest of five children. In 1947, he began his scientific career in Carl Gustaf Bernhard's laboratory at the Karolinska Institute, where he received his medical degree in 1954. He went on to teach in the Institute's department of physiology and worked in the child psychiatry unit of the Karolinska Hospital. In 1955 he moved to the United States to work at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine under Stephen Kuffler. Wiesel began a fellowship in ophthalmology, and in 1958 he became an assistant professor. That same year, he met David Hubel, beginning a collaboration that would last over twenty years. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Hubel
David Hunter Hubel (February 27, 1926 – September 22, 2013) was a Canadian American neurophysiologist noted for his studies of the structure and function of the visual cortex. He was co-recipient with Torsten Wiesel of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (shared with Roger W. Sperry), for their discoveries concerning information processing in the visual system. For much of his career, Hubel worked as the Professor of Neurobiology at Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Medical School. In 1978, Hubel and Wiesel were awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University. In 1983, Hubel received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. Early life and education David H. Hubel was born in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, to American parents in 1926. His grandfather emigrated as a child to the United States from the Bavarian town of Nördlingen. In 1929, his family moved to Montreal, where he spent his formative years. His father was a che ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eleanor Maguire
Eleanor Anne Maguire (born 27 March 1970) is an Irish neuroscientist. Since 2007, she has been Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London where she is also a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow. Early life and education Maguire was born in Dublin, Ireland. She studied psychology at University College Dublin and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (BA Hons) degree in 1990. She studied Clinical and experimental neuropsychology at University of Wales, Swansea and graduated with a Master of Science degree in 1991. She undertook her Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree at University College Dublin, Ireland, where she first became interested in the neural basis of memory while working with patients as a neuropsychologist at Beaumont Hospital, Dublin. She completed her PhD in 1994, and her doctoral thesis was titled ''Real-world spatial memory following temporal-lobe surgery in humans''. Research and career Maguire is a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shepherd Ivory Franz
Shepherd Ivory Franz (May 27, 1874 – October 14, 1933) was an American psychologist. He was the first chairman of the psychology department at the University of California, Los Angeles and served as president of the American Psychological Association. Franz was the editor of multiple psychological journals and he contributed research to the concepts of neuroplasticity, afterimages and cerebral localization. He spent many years affiliated with George Washington University School of Medicine and the Government Hospital for the Insane, later known as St. Elizabeth's Hospital. Biography Early life Shepherd Franz was born on May 27, 1874 in Jersey City, New Jersey, where Franz attended public schools. His father was a German immigrant. Franz earned an undergraduate degree and a PhD in psychology from Columbia University. Franz attended graduate school with Edward Thorndike and studied under James McKeen Cattell. He studied in Leipzig in Germany for one year but seldom encountered Wil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stroke
A stroke is a medical condition in which poor blood flow to the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and hemorrhagic, due to bleeding. Both cause parts of the brain to stop functioning properly. Signs and symptoms of a stroke may include an inability to move or feel on one side of the body, problems understanding or speaking, dizziness, or loss of vision to one side. Signs and symptoms often appear soon after the stroke has occurred. If symptoms last less than one or two hours, the stroke is a transient ischemic attack (TIA), also called a mini-stroke. A hemorrhagic stroke may also be associated with a severe headache. The symptoms of a stroke can be permanent. Long-term complications may include pneumonia and loss of bladder control. The main risk factor for stroke is high blood pressure. Other risk factors include high blood cholesterol, tobacco smoking, obesity, diabetes mellitus, a previous TIA, end-st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sensory Substitution
Sensory substitution is a change of the characteristics of one sensory modality into stimuli of another sensory modality. A sensory substitution system consists of three parts: a sensor, a coupling system, and a stimulator. The sensor records stimuli and gives them to a coupling system which interprets these signals and transmits them to a stimulator. In case the sensor obtains signals of a kind not originally available to the bearer it is a case of sensory augmentation. Sensory substitution concerns human perception and the plasticity of the human brain; and therefore, allows us to study these aspects of neuroscience more through neuroimaging. Sensory substitution systems may help people by restoring their ability to perceive certain defective sensory modality by using sensory information from a functioning sensory modality. History The idea of sensory substitution was introduced in the 1980s by Paul Bach-y-Rita as a means of using one sensory modality, mainly taction, to gai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jon Kaas
Jon Kaas is a professor at Vanderbilt University and a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences. He has made discoveries about the organization of the mammalian brain, including the description of many areas of the cerebral cortex and their neuroplasticity. Work from the Kaas's laboratory is notable for its emphasis on evolutionary biology. Kaas's approach is to try to understand how complex brains evolved from ancestor forms which had relatively few areas. Some of the career highlights include: * Some of the first descriptions of topographically organized areas in the extrastriate cortex of primates, including the middle temporal area MT, or V5 (Allman and Kaas, 1971), and the dorsomedial area, or V6. * Demonstration of changes in the topographic representation of sensory organs in the cerebral cortex after lesions of the sensory organs (Kaas et al. 1990; see also neuroplasticity). References Other sources *Allman JM, Kaas JH (1971) A representation of the vi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Merzenich
Michael Matthias Merzenich ( ; born 1942 in Lebanon, Oregon) is an American neuroscientist and professor emeritus at the University of California, San Francisco. He took the sensory cortex maps developed by his predecessors (Archie Tunturi, Clinton Woolsey, Vernon Mountcastle, Wade Marshall, and Philip Bard) and refined them using dense micro-electrode mapping techniques. Using this, he definitively showed there to be multiple somatotopic maps of the body in the postcentral sulcus, and multiple tonotopic maps of the acoustic inputs in the superior temporal plane. He led the cochlear implant team at UCSF, which transferred its technology to Advanced Bionics, and their version is the Clarion cochlear implant. He collaborated with Bill Jenkins and Gregg Recanzone to demonstrate sensory maps are labile into adulthood in animals performing operant sensory tasks. He collaborated with Paula Tallal, Bill Jenkins, and Steve Miller to form the company Scientific Learning. This was based on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Bach-y-Rita
Paul Bach-y-Rita (April 4, 1934 – November 20, 2006) was an American neuroscientist whose most notable work was in the field of neuroplasticity. Bach-y-Rita was one of the first to seriously study the idea of neuroplasticity (although it was first proposed in the late 19th century), and to introduce sensory substitution as a tool to treat patients with neurological disorders. Bach-y-Rita is known as "the father of sensory substitution". Biography Bach-y-Rita was born on April 4, 1934, in New York City to Anne Hyman and Pedro Bach-y-Rita, the latter a Catalan poet and teacher at City College of New York. He studied at the Bronx High School of Science, from which he graduated at the age of fifteen before studying at Mexico City College (now the University of the Americas in Puebla). After his early education, he studied medicine at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). He initially dropped out, going through several varied jobs, but later returned to finish his degre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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