Cerebral cortical plasticity and adaptive response to somatosensory stimuly

Interpreting and reacting to sensory stimuli seems easy and effortless, and cognitive neuroscience and neurology usually regard sensory processing as one of the brain's simplest functions. But the appropriate perception of sensory events relies on the moment-to-moment adjustment of the way in which sensory signals are processed, a gain-control mechanism known as adaptation. Adaptation is likely to be the requisite first step in normal sensory-perceptual learning; furthermore, deficits in adaptation mechanisms could result in sounds being perceived as disturbingly loud or imperceptibly quiet, and a touch of the skin as painfully sharp - these are the objective symptoms of some sorts of autism or AD/HD. In this project we will study the neuronal mechanisms underlying adaptation in the tactile system of the laboratory rat. In normal human subjects we will explore the features and parameters of tactile adaptation and learning; we will investigate whether disorders in adaptive mechanisms are one component of neuropsychological disorders such as autism and AD/HD.