Stimulating the deprived motor ‘hand’ area causes facial muscle responses in one-handers

How the brain adapts to absence of sensory inputs and motor outputs from early development is a key question in neuroscience. While deprivation has long been known trigger changes cortical maps cortex, e.g. due blindness [1], deafness [2] or arm malformation [3], there an ongoing debate on their functional relevance. For example, using fMRI, we have previously reported that deprived sensorimotor hand territory individuals born without shows increased activity evoked by movements lips, feet residual arm, when compared two-handed controls [4,5].