Experience-dependent plasticity is the ability of brain circuits to undergo molecular, structural and functional changes as a function of neural activity. Neural activity continuously shapes our brain during all the stages of our life, from infancy through adulthood and beyond. Epigenetic modifications of histone proteins and DNA seem to be a leading molecular mechanism to modulate the transcri...

German version __________________________________________________ 9 1. The amygdala_________________________________________________________ 11 1.1. General anatomy and connectivity................................................................................... 12 1.1.1. Anatomy......................................................................................................................

Adult stem cell plasticity, or the ability of somatic stem cells to cross boundaries and differentiate into unrelated cell types, has been a matter of debate in the last decade. Neural-crest-derived stem cells (NCSCs) display a remarkable plasticity during development. Whether adult populations of NCSCs retain this plasticity is largely unknown. Herein, we describe that neural-crest-derived adu...

Functional maturation of GABAergic innervation in the developing visual cortex is regulated by neural activity and sensory inputs and in turn influences the critical period of ocular dominance plasticity. Here we show that polysialic acid (PSA), presented by the neural cell adhesion molecule, has a role in the maturation of GABAergic innervation and ocular dominance plasticity. Concentrations o...

Despite numerous clinical studies, which have investigated the therapeutic potential of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) in various brain diseases, our knowledge of the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying rTMS-based therapies remains limited. Thus, a deeper understanding of rTMS-induced neural plasticity is required to optimize current treatment protocols. Studies in...

This paper presents a deterministic and adaptive spike model derived from radial basis functions and a leaky integrate-andfire sampler developed for training spiking neural networks without direct weight manipulation. Several algorithms have been proposed for training spiking neural networks through biologically-plausible learning mechanisms, such as spike-timingdependent synaptic plasticity an...

you may have heard that the Brain is plastic. As you know the brain is not made of plastic, Brain Plasticity also called Neuroplasticity. Brain plasticity is a physical process. Gray matter can actually shrink or thicken neural connections can be forged and refined or weakened and severed. Brain Plasticity refers to the brain’s ability to change throughout life. The brain has the amazing abilit...

Background: Alterations of neuroplasticity and cortical excitability are important pathophysiological factors in stroke. Modulation of the neuroplasticity has been proposed as an underlying mechanism of recovery in different neurological disorders. But it is not still clear how the CNS faces the complexity of muscle control. Neuroplastic processes may be used for the functional improvement of s...

Disability associated with chronic pain is a prevalent worldwide problem. Much of our understanding of how and why chronic pain develops has been provided through developments in neural imaging and assessment techniques. Such investigations have highlighted the substantial amount of neural plasticity, or neural reorganisation, that is possible within the nociceptive system. While this plasticit...