Traumatic brain injury (TBI) remains a significant source of death and permanent disability, contributing to nearly one-third of all injury related deaths in the United States and exacting a profound personal and economic toll. Despite the increased resources that have recently been brought to bear to improve our understanding of TBI, the developme
Brain plasticity is the focus of a growing body of research with significant implications for neurorehabilitation. This state-of-the-art volume explores ways in which brain-injured individuals may be helped not only to compensate for their loss of cognitive abilities, but also possibly to restore those abilities. Expert contributors examine the extent to which damaged cortical regions can actually recover and resume previous functions, as well as how intact regions are recruited to take on tasks once mediated by the damaged region. Evidence-based rehabilitation approaches are reviewed for a range of impairments and clinical populations, including both children and adults.
It is well-established that the human nervous system is able to modify its functions in response to activity or experience. This response has been termed ‘neuroplasticity’ and involves the reorganisation of neural circuits that control human movement. Recent evidence suggests that the primary motor cortex (M1) can experience neuroplasticity following various types of physical activity. Although neuroplasticity can be stimulated in a variety of ways, recently, it has been reported following exercise, injury and during periods of rehabilitation. This book introduces the key concepts that underpin human motor control and its application to exercise science and rehabilitation. The topics covered here integrate research, theory and the clinical applications of exercise neuroscience that will support students, researchers and clinicians to understand how the nervous system responds, or adapts, to physical activity, training, rehabilitation and disease. The book uses a mix of neuromuscular physiology, electrophysiology and muscle physiology to provide a synthesis of current knowledge and research in the field of exercise neuroscience that specifically examines the effects of exercise training, injury and rehabilitation of the human nervous system. This is the first textbook of its kind that describes the neurological benefits of exercise, and will be a highly valuable text for undergraduate students studying exercise science, exercise physiology and physiotherapy.
A comprehensive, multidisciplinary review, Neural Plasticity and Memory: From Genes to Brain Imaging provides an in-depth, up-to-date analysis of the study of the neurobiology of memory. Leading specialists share their scientific experience in the field, covering a wide range of topics where molecular, genetic, behavioral, and brain imaging techniq
This volume makes clear that the cognitive and behavioural symptoms of neurologic disorders and syndromes are dynamic and changing. Each chapter describes the neuroplastic processes at work in a particular condition, giving rise to these ongoing cognitive changes.
The real story of how our brains and nervous systems change throughout our lifetimes—with or without “brain training.” Fifty years ago, neuroscientists thought that a mature brain was fixed like a fly in amber, unable to change. Today, we know that our brains and nervous systems change throughout our lifetimes. This concept of neuroplasticity has captured the imagination of a public eager for self-improvement—and has inspired countless Internet entrepreneurs who peddle dubious “brain training” games and apps. In this book, Moheb Costandi offers a concise and engaging overview of neuroplasticity for the general reader, describing how our brains change continuously in response to our actions and experiences. Costandi discusses key experimental findings, and describes how our thinking about the brain has evolved over time. He explains how the brain changes during development, and the “synaptic pruning” that takes place before brain maturity. He shows that adult brains can grow new cells (citing, among many other studies, research showing that sexually mature male canaries learn a new song every year). He describes the kind of brain training that can bring about improvement in brain function. It's not gadgets and games that promise to “rewire your brain” but such sustained cognitive tasks as learning a musical instrument or a new language. (Costandi also notes that London cabbies increase their gray matter after rigorous training in their city's complicated streets.) He tells how brains compensate after stroke or injury; describes addiction and pain as maladaptive forms of neuroplasticity; and considers brain changes that accompany childhood, adolescence, parenthood, and aging. Each of our brains is custom-built. Neuroplasticity is at the heart of what makes us human.
This book provides comprehensive and up-to-date insights into emerging research trends on neuroplasticity with current or future treatments for neurodevelopment and neurodegenerative diseases. The authors discuss structural and functional changes associated with cortical remapping, sensory substitution, synaptic and non-synaptic compensatory plasticity due to brain damage, brain training, chronic pain, meditation, music, exercise and related states. Key features include pathogenesis, and existing and new therapies together with a pharmacological and non-pharmacological approach in clinical treatment and management. The authors are established experts that contributed significantly to a better understanding of the etiology of neuroplasticity. This book is recommended to healthcare providers, clinical scientists, students and patients.
Stroke Rehabilitation: Insights from Neuroscience and Imaging informs and challenges neurologists, rehabilitation therapists, imagers, and stroke specialists to adopt more restorative and scientific approaches to stroke rehabilitation based on new evidence from neuroscience and neuroimaging literatures. The fields of cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging are advancing rapidly and providing new insights into human behavior and learning. Similarly, improved knowledge of how the brain processes information after injury and recovers over time is providing new perspectives on what can be achieved through rehabilitation. Stroke Rehabilitation explores the potential to shape and maximize neural plastic changes in the brain after stroke from a multimodal perspective. Active skill based learning is identified as a central element of a restorative approach to rehabilitation. The evidence behind core learning principles as well as specific learning strategies that have been applied to retrain lost functions of movement, sensation, cognition and language are also discussed. Current interventions are evaluated relative to this knowledge base and examples are given of how active learning principles have been successfully applied in specific interventions. The benefits and evidence behind enriched environments is reviewed with examples of potential application in stroke rehabilitation. The capacity of adjunctive therapies, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation, to modulate receptivity of the damaged brain to benefit from behavioral interventions is also discussed in the context of this multimodal approach. Focusing on new insights from neuroscience and imaging, the book explores the potential to tailor interventions to the individual based on viable brain networks.
This book provides a broad survey of many of the major areas in neuroplasticity research by leading investigators in the field. The topics considered range across all levels of nervous system organization from the molecular to behavioral levels for species ranging from C. elegans to humans. In addition, the effects of development and neuropathological events are discussed. A final summary chapter synthesizes the data gathered in this volume in order to provide the basis for a general theory of neuroplasticity.
The premise of neuroplasticity on enhancing cognitive functioning among healthy as well as cognitively impaired individuals across the lifespan, and the potential of harnessing these processes to prevent cognitive decline attract substantial scientific and public interest. Indeed, the systematic evidence base for cognitive training, video games, physical exercise and other forms of brain stimulation such as entrain brain activity is growing rapidly. This Research Topic (RT) focused on recent research conducted in the field of cognitive and brain plasticity induced by physical activity, different types of cognitive training, including computerized interventions, learning therapy, video games, and combined intervention approaches as well as other forms of brain stimulation that target brain activity, including electroencephalography and neurofeedback. It contains 49 contributions to the topic, including Original Research articles (37), Clinical Trials (2), Reviews (5), Mini Reviews (2), Hypothesis and Theory (1), and Corrections (2).
