Linked Life Data

11534867

Source:http://linkedlifedata.com/resource/pubmed/id/11534867

Statements in which the resource exists as a subject.
PredicateObject
rdf:type
lifeskim:mentions
pubmed:issue
4
pubmed:dateCreated
2001-9-5
pubmed:abstractText
The somatosensory system has been shown to alter its cortical activation patterns in reaction to changes in the attended sensory input to certain body parts. Whether these modifications in the functional organization of the somatosensory cortex of humans also result in perceptual changes has rarely been investigated. Here we used near-threshold tactile stimuli to the center of the fingertips to evoke mislocalizations to fingers other than the stimulated. In healthy untrained subjects, the distribution of the mislocalizations from each of the fingers was different from a distribution expected if the subjects were purely guessing the position of the stimulus. The digits next to the stimulated one receive a higher number of mislocalizations than digits further away from the stimulated digits. This decrease can be accounted for by digit-overlapping receptive fields in combination with the sequential representation of the digits in the primary somatosensory cortex. In a second experiment subjects received 20 h of simultaneous stimulation of the left thumb and little finger in the context of a perceptual task. For both hands, the distribution of mislocalization from these fingers was analyzed at the beginning and the end of the training. For the left hand, the number of assigned mislocalizations to the most distant neighbor digit (i.e., the simultaneously stimulated digit in the training) increased while the number of mislocalizations toward the direct neighboring digit decreased with the training. This change did not occur in the untrained right hand, or in the untrained subjects. We conclude that the distribution of mislocalization to fingers other than the stimulated can be used to investigate perceptual changes paralleling training-induced modifications in the activation patterns of the somatosensory cortex.
pubmed:language
eng
pubmed:journal
pubmed:citationSubset
IM
pubmed:status
MEDLINE
pubmed:month
Aug
pubmed:issn
0014-4819
pubmed:author
pubmed:issnType
Print
pubmed:volume
139
pubmed:owner
NLM
pubmed:authorsComplete
Y
pubmed:pagination
435-42
pubmed:dateRevised
2009-11-11
pubmed:meshHeading
pubmed:year
2001
pubmed:articleTitle
The distribution of mislocalizations across fingers demonstrates training-induced neuroplastic changes in somatosensory cortex.
pubmed:affiliation
Institute of Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology, MEG-Center, University of Tuebingen, Germany. renate.schweizer@uni-tuebingen.de
pubmed:publicationType
Journal Article, Clinical Trial, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't