Adaptive and maladaptive brain plasticity

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Our brain's ability to adapt how it processes inputs based on changed experience (brain plasticity) is considered a key mechanism for supporting how we learn new skills and recover from injury. Hand function is essential for most aspects of daily life, and as such provides a rich model for studying brain function and plasticity. We aim to understanding how the brain best supports hand function and how it can best cope with hand dysfunction. We are particularly interested in studying how we could use technology to increase hand functionality in able and disabled individuals at all ages. For example, we want to know what happens to the cortical territories of the hand following arm amputation, and understand how the brain best supports the acquisition of new skills necessary for amputees to adapt to their disability, including prosthetic limb usage and augmentative technology such as the Third Thumb (Dani Clode Design). We are also interested in further understanding why amputees experience vivid sensations of their missing hand many decades after amputation, and how we could help alleviate phantom limb pain. To understand these processes better, we combine experimental models, performed on healthy participants, and related clinical populations. We hope that our research will enable clinical populations and those relying on motor augmentation to take advantage of the benefits of brain plasticity, rather than to suffer from their adverse effects.