Caroline Summer

Plasticity of Somatosensory Cortex in Primates

Sherre L. Florence, Neeraj Jain, Jon H. Kaas
Previous research in the field of neuroscience and psychology has contributed to the
widespread knowledge that the developing brain has a high plasticity potential; the organization
of sensory systems in the brain can be largely affected by injury/trauma or sensory deprivation1.
However, this was not previously thought to be the same case with adult brains in which
development was complete or mature, therefore making it relatively stable. Though adult
brains are mature and have finished development, there are still changes that must be
accommodated for; if all of the connections in the brain were set in stone, new experiences and
learning would have no effect. New research has shown that growth and plasticity can occur in
the adult brain, which was the basis of this article. Much research has been done to show the
developmental plasticity of the brain, but only recently studies have begun to show how this can
be applied to the adult brain, as is the case with this article by Florence and colleagues.
Psychologists study brain plasticity as its important to understand the organization of the brain
and its functions, and how certain experiences may effect this or influence behavior. Its also
important research to the field of psychology as the results may help to design treatments.
Florence and colleagues analyzed a number of different studies contributing to the
plasticity of the somatosensory cortex in primates, as well as subcortical modifications.
Recanzone and colleagues used individual monkeys that were trained to notice differences in the
flutter-vibration rate of tactile stimuli2. The training resulted in improved discrimination
performance, as one would imagine; but its the effects on the brain that allude to large changes.
1 Florence, S.L., Jain, N., & Kaas, J. H. (1997). Plasticity of Somatosensory Cortex in Primates.
Seminars in NEUROSCIENCE, 9, 3-12.

Receptive field size and overlap, temporal response, and overall representation size of the
portion of the hand used in the task are all significant correlational changes in the cortical map,
thereby determining a relationship between sensory performance and cortical map changes.
Another study looked at parts of the brain other than the higher cortical centers to see if there
was potential for plasticity. The spinal cord, brain stem, and thalamus were not thought to be
involved in the cortical changes. However, a study done with cats in which sensory manipulation
was used to deprive cells in the dorsal horn of dominant excitatory inputs lead to neurons over
time responding to previously unexpressed inputs, therefore expressing spinal cord involvement3.
In the brain stem, topographic changes were witnessed after dorsal root transections in the
gracile and cuneate nuclei; however, these changes are species-specific and only was applicable
with cats and rats4. With the thalamus, rats, raccoons, and monkeys showed remarkable
potential for change through peripheral denervation5. All of these experiments manipulating
somatosensory contexts showed that cortical changes reflect subcortical modifications. In
addition to these, a study was done with adult brain growth and plasticity in the case of new axon
growth after a large injury. Pons and coworkers performed a dorsal rhizotomy on monkeys
which led to a loss of sensory input from the forelimb. After, microelectrode mapping was used
to study the topographic organization of the somatosensory cortex. This research led to the
2 Recanzone, G. H., Merzenich, M. M., Jenkins, W. M., Grajski, K. A., and Dinse, H. R. (1992)
Topographic reorganization of the hand representation in cortical area 3b of owl monkeys trained in a
frequency-discrimination task. J. Neurophysiol. 67, 10311057.
3 Koerber, H. R., and Brown, P. B. (1995) Quantitative analysis of dorsal horn cell receptive fields
following limited deafferentation. J. Neurophysiol. 74, 20652076.
4 Pettit, M. J., and Schwark, H. D. (1993) Receptive field reorganization in dorsal column nuclei during
temporary denervation. Science 292, 20542056.
5 Garraghty, P. E., and Kaas, J. H. (1991) Functional reorganization in adult monkey thalamus after
peripheral nerve injury. NeuroReport 2, 747750.

discovery that a large zone of cortex which used to represent the forelimb had been completely
reactivated by inputs from the face, determining that adult brains can experience new
reactivation and growth. All of the studies done in the article by Florence and colleagues, despite
their different research methods, alluded to discoveries associated with plasticity in the already
developed brain. As its important to study new axon growth as seen with the research done by
Pons and coworkers, my question is this: in what new ways besides amputation could this occur,
since amputation often contributes to negative phantom pain? In addition, what would the
topographic changes look like in different species of primates or another species all together?