Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 97, Issue 10, Pages 5546-5550Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.090572597
Keywords
primate; somatosensory; sprouting; plasticity; dorsal columns
Categories
Funding
- NINDS NIH HHS [NS 16446, NS 36469, R01 NS016446] Funding Source: Medline
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Somatotopic maps in the cortex and the thalamus of adult monkeys and humans reorganize in response to altered inputs. After toss of the sensory afferents from the forelimb in monkeys because of transection of the dorsal columns of the spinal cord, therapeutic amputation of an arm or transection of the dorsal roots of the peripheral nerves, the deprived portions of the hand and arm representations in primary somatosensory cortex (area 3b), become responsive to inputs from the face and any remaining afferents from the arm. Cortical and subcortical mechanisms that underlie this reorganization are uncertain and appear to be manifold. Here we show that the face afferents from the trigeminal nucleus of the brainstem sprout and grow into the cuneate nucleus in adult monkeys after lesions of the dorsal columns of the spinal cord or therapeutic amputation of an arm. This growth may underlie the large-scale expansion of the face representation into the hand region of somatosensory cortex that follows such deafferentations.
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