Learning in sensorimotor circuits

The study of plasticity in the central nervous system is a major and very dynamic neuroscience research field with enormous clinical potential. Considerable advances in this field have been made during the past 10 years. It now appears that most circuits in the brain and spinal cord show plasticity and that they can be modified by experience. Knowledge of the mechanisms of plasticity in the nervous system is therefore essential for the understanding of how the nervous system is wired during development and how it adapts in response to changes in the body and environment. Recent findings indicate that functional sensorimotor modules probe the sensory signals from the body that are generated as a consequence of module specific activity and use this sensory feedback to calibrate the strength in its input-output connections. This experience-dependent signal adapts the circuitry in the sensorimotor module to the body anatomy and biomechanics.