Plasticity, and Its Limits, in Adult Human Primary Visual Cortex

Abstract

Article:Haak, Koen V, Morland, Antony B orcid.org/0000-0002-6754-5545 and Engel, Stephen A (2015) Plasticity, and Its Limits, in Adult Human Primary Visual Cortex. Multisensory Research. 297-307. ISSN 2213-4808 https://doi.org/10.1163/22134808-00002496 eprints@whiterose.ac.uk https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ Reuse Unless indicated otherwise, fulltext items are protected by copyright with all rights reserved. The copyright exception in section 29 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 allows the making of a single copy solely for the purpose of non-commercial research or private study within the limits of fair dealing. The publisher or other rights-holder may allow further reproduction and re-use of this version -refer to the White Rose Research Online record for this item. Where records identify the publisher as the copyright holder, users can verify any specific terms of use on the publisher's website. TakedownIf you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing eprints@whiterose.ac.uk including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. Multisensory ResearchPlasticity, and its Limits, in Adult Human Primary Visual Cortex There is an ongoing debate about whether adult human primary visual cortex (V1) is capable of large-scale cortical reorganization in response to bilateral retinal lesions. Animal models suggest that the visual neural circuitry maintains some plasticity through adulthood, and there are also a few human imaging studies in support this notion. However, the interpretation of these data has been brought into question, because there are factors besides cortical reorganization that could also explain the results. Still, how reasonable would it be to accept that adult human V1 does not reorganize itself in the face of disease? Here, we discuss new evidence for the hypothesis that adult human V1 is not as capable of reorganization as in animals and juveniles, because in adult humans, cortical reorganization would come with costs that outweigh its benefits. These costs are likely functional and visible in recent experiments on adaptation a rapid, short-term form of neural plasticity where they prevent reorganization from being sustained over the long-term. Keywords AbstractThere is an ongoing debate about whether adult human primary visual cortex (V1) is capable of

Representational drift in the mouse visual cortex

“…The specific mechanisms that underlie representational drift remain elusive, but it was suggested that drift may be an inevitable outcome of the network dynamics in deep brain circuits that consist of multiple input and output loops (Rule, O’Leary and Harvey, 2019). Consistent with this logic, and given the need to support stable perception and motor outputs, it is plausible that brain circuits situated closer to the sensory input or to the motor output will display highly stable neuronal representations (Haak, Morland and Engel, 2015; Haak and Mesik, 2016).…”

Stability of Sensory Topographies in Adult Cortex

“…This process, termed cortical reorganisation, is perhaps the most extreme form of brain plasticity. According to these early studies, however, reorganisation is much more restricted in the adult brain: adult cats subjected to visual occlusion did not exhibit the same deficits and cortical changes as did kittens [3] (see [4] and [5] for related evidence in monkeys and humans; see [6] for current debate on the adult’s visual cortex capacity for reorganisation).…”

Learning to see again: biological constraints on cortical plasticity and the implications for sight restoration technologies

“…As far as the modeling confound is concerned, failing to factor in the absence of input when the stimulus falls within the scotoma biases receptive field estimates in a way that closely mimics the expected effects of cortical reorganization (Binda et al 2013, Haak et al 2015). All the neurophysiological (Kaas et al 1990, Gilbert and Wiesel 1992, Darian-Smith and Gilbert 1995, Abe et al 2015) and fMRI (Baseler et al 2011, Ferreira et al 2017) studies that did find shifts in retinal organization in V1 used methods susceptible to this modeling confound.…”