Perception and action are the result of an integration of various sources of information, such as current sensory input, prior experience, or the context in which a stimulus occurs. Often, the interpretation is not trivial hence needs to be learned from the co-occurrence of stimuli. Yet, how do we combine such diverse information to guide our action? Here we use a distance production-reproducti...

Subjective experience of a peripherally-induced sensation is found to appear without the substantial delay found for the experience of a cortically-induced sensation. To explain this finding, in relation to the putative delay of up to about 500 ms for achieving the "neuronal adequacy" required to elicit the peripherally-induced experience, a modified hypothesis is proposed: for a peripheral sen...

Experience-dependent maturation of neocortical circuits is required for normal sensory and cognitive abilities, which are distorted in neurodevelopmental disorders. We tested whether experience-dependent neocortical modifications require Ube3a, an E3 ubiquitin ligase whose dysregulation has been implicated in autism and Angelman syndrome. Using visual cortex as a model, we found that experience...

Phantom pain after arm amputation is widely believed to arise from maladaptive cortical reorganization, triggered by loss of sensory input. We instead propose that chronic phantom pain experience drives plasticity by maintaining local cortical representations and disrupting inter-regional connectivity. Here we show that, while loss of sensory input is generally characterized by structural and f...

Nature based tourism products offer valuable experience to visitors which can only be appreciated or stimulated using sensory elements. Visual, sound, taste, smell, touch and mobility are sensory elements that are able to enhance visitors’ experience in any particular destination. However, some destinations might not provide all the elements. Therefore this study’s objective is to assess the ro...

Early onset blindness allows one to investigate how the human brain adapts to sensory experience in infancy and early childhood. Over the past decade, lesion, functional and structural imaging studies have accumulated evidence that severe perturbations to visual experience alter the functional and structural organization of the human brain. Visual deprivation can induce plastic changes not only...

Objectives: Individuals with schizophrenia show perceptual-cognitive abnormalities. Besides, depression and anxiety is an integral part of the disease most of the times. People with mental diseases, while under institutional care, experience lack of control and choice in their daily lives. Sensory room is an environment in which individuals can choose, control and explore the stimuli around the...