Assignment 4 due Fri December, 10th
Extra Credit – answer questions on the
Human Neuropsychology (486 / 686)
Lecture Chapter 25
“Plasticity, Recovery, and
Rehabilitation of the Adult
Cortical Plasticity and the Intact
Adult Brain
Neural Plasticity can be studied through:
Observable behavior
Cerebral maps
Synaptic organization
Physiological organization
Molecular structure
Inferring Plasticity from Changes in
Prism Adaptation
Subjects fitted with prisms can adapt to the
shifted visual world
Neural changes occur in the premotor cortex
and visual cortex
Changes disappear after prism removal
Plasticity in Cortical Maps
Motor and sensory maps are altered by
Plasticity in Synaptic Organization
challenge is
associated with
Plasticity in Physiological Organization
 Plasticity
in Molecular Structure
and Mitosis:
- Changes in gene expression
- Neurogenesis – olfactory bulb and
Both occur in response to experience / injury
 Experience
dependent changes:
- Drugs change neural morphology
- Environment and drug interactions
Plasticity and Recovery from Injury
Physiological Events
Compensation vs Recovery
Examples of Function Restitution
Recovery from Motor-Cortex Damage
Recovery from hemiplegia
Return of reflexes
Facilitated Grasping
Voluntary grasping
Complete recovery occurs in about 30% of
Examples of Function Restitution
Recovery from
Examples of Function Restitution
Recovery from Traumatic Lesion
50% no recovery at all
Recovery from Surgical Lesions
no recovery in most cases
recovery of some memory abilities
Plasticity in the Injured Brain
Functional Imaging after Cerebral Injury
Post-stroke changes :
1. Functional improvement is associated with
activation of remaining sensorimotor cortex
2. Movement of the limbs activates motor cortex
along the rim of the injury and often activates
regions of the face area
3. Larger regions of activation in the parietal and
premotor areas during language and motor
3. Reorganization takes place bilaterally
4. Capacity for reorganization declines with
increases in stroke size and age
Considerable variability exists between patients
Mapping after
Cerebral Injury
Remapping: loss of
the hand area
from the cortex
Therapy after
removal of the
hand area
facilitates recovery
Therapeutic Approaches to Brain
Movement Therapy
Cognitive Rehabilitation
Pharmacological Therapies
 Brain Stimulation
 Brain-Tissue Transplants and Stem-Cell
1. Memory impairment associated with retrograde
amnesia following traumatic brain injury are:
a. more pronounced for older memories than for
newer memories
b. more pronounced for newer memories than for
older memories
c. the same regardless of the age of the memory
d. greater for information learned after the point of
2. One of the proposed differences between
implicit and explicit memory is that explicit
memory depends on __________
processing to a greater extent than does
implicit memory.
a. “top-down”
b. “bottom-up”
c. neutral
d. temporal lobe
3. The fundamental sounds in language are
a. morphemes
b. lexicals
c. phonemes
d. vowels
4. Cases of brain damage in deaf individuals who
use sign language suggest that the organization
of gestural language:
a. has its focus in the right parietal cortex along
with other spatial functions
b. is very similar to that of spoken language with
the left hemisphere dominant for both
c. is inconclusive as no particular pattern has
d. is predominantly controlled by subcortical
5. Our ability to use information outside of
our conscious awareness to guide our
behavior is known as:
1. selective attention
b. gist
c. unconscious deduction
d. unconscious inference
6. A patient who experiences no difficulties
finding her way around the home where
she lived for most of her adult life but
becomes spatially disoriented in her most
recent home is suffering from __________
a. retrograde
b. egocentric
c. anterograde
d. allocentric
7. What is autonoetic awareness?
8. What are the three main parts of the
Wernecke-Geswind model?
9. Compare and contrast Damasio’s somatic
marker theory of emotion with Ledoux’s
cognitive emotional interactions theory.

Central Tendency” - North Dakota State University