Sensory deprivation sheds light on cortical plasticity mechanisms, but recovery of lost brain function may bear the greatest clinical relevance. Ramoa and colleagues now find that binocular recovery from monocular occlusion can be extraordinarily rapid, independent of protein synthesis, and precise. Reactivation of latent connections may then reverse amblyopia.

A two year prospective study of 221 consecutive inpatients undergoing cataractomy revealed the incidence of post-cataractomy delirium to be 1.8%. While in one case the delirium was due to anticholinergic toxicity, in the remaining three cases no organic cause was evident. Sensory deprivation was present in two patients. Preventive measures for the condition are discussed.

This paper includes information required for establishing and conducting an occupational therapy program in an intensive care unit. Three common problems in the intensive care unit are immobility and prolonged bed rest, sensory deprivation and stress, and prolonged mechanical ventilation. The resolution of these rehabilitation problems through occupational therapy intervention is addressed.

Uniplanar nystagmus has been described in relation to pathology of the brain stem, retina, optic nerve, sensory visual deprivation, periventricular leucomalacia, and drug toxicity. This paper describes a case of uniplanar nystagmus associated with features of higher visual dysfunction and a presumed focal insult to the occipital lobes following an episode of neonatal apnea.

In the phenomenon known as cross-modal plasticity, the loss of one sensory system is followed by improved functioning of other intact sensory systems. MRI and functional MRI studies suggested a role of the prefrontal cortex and the temporal lobe in cross-modal plasticity. We used a mouse model to examine the effects of sensory deprivation achieved by whisker trimming and visual deprivation achi...

The capacity of adult barrel cortex to show experience-dependent plasticity after early restricted neonatal sensory deprivation was analyzed in barrel field cortex neurons. Selective sensory deprivation was induced by trimming two whiskers from postnatal day 0 (P0) to P21, namely, the principal D2 whisker plus one adjacent surround whisker (D3). At maturity (P90), responses of supragranular (la...

Sensory and environmental manipulations affect the development of sensory systems. Higher-order auditory representations (auditory categories or "objects") evolve with experience and via top-down influences modify representations in early auditory areas. During development of a functional auditory system, the capacity for bottom-up reorganizations is successively less well expressed due to a mo...

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 sensorimoto...

The sensory circumventricular organs (CVOs) are specialized collections of neurons and glia that lie in the midline of the third and fourth ventricles of the brain, lack a blood-brain barrier, and function as chemosensors, sampling both the cerebrospinal fluid and plasma. These structures, which include the organum vasculosum of the lamina terminalis (OVLT), subfornical organ (SFO), and area po...

In the investigation of brain plasticity two stages can be usually distinguished. In the training stage some plastic changes are produced, while other, developing under normal conditions, may be reduced. In the testing stage those effects are analysed. Four methods are used in the training stage: developing conditioned reflex, sensory deprivation, abnormal sensory stimulation, and causing a loc...