Plasticity of adult sensorimotor representations

Plasticity of sensory and motor cortical and subcortical representations in the adult brain appears to be a general phenomenon in animals that has now been extended to humans. There is a growing understanding of the mechanisms and rules that regulate the form and extent of reorganization; these appear to include activity-dependent control of synaptic efficacy, details of circuit arrangements, and growth of new axonal arbors. Of particular relevance to plasticity of cerebral cortical sensorimotor representations is recent evidence for the participation of intracortical horizontal pathways. These fibers provide a substrate for reorganization and contain mechanisms for increases or decreases in synaptic efficacy that depend on particular spatiotemporal activation patterns.