Adaptive and maladaptive brain plasticity

我们的大脑有能力根据变化的经验来适应它处理输入的方式（大脑可塑性），这被认为是支持我们学习新技能和从受伤中恢复的关键机制。手的功能在日常生活的大多数方面都是必不可少的，因此为研究大脑功能和可塑性提供了丰富的模型。我们的目标是了解大脑如何最好地支持手部功能，以及它如何最好地应对手部功能障碍。我们特别感兴趣的是研究如何利用技术来提高所有年龄段的健全人和残疾人的手部功能。例如，我们想知道手臂截肢后手的皮质区域发生了什么变化，并了解大脑如何最好地支持截肢者获得必要的新技能，以适应他们的残疾，包括假肢的使用和辅助技术，如第三拇指（Dani Clode设计）。我们也有兴趣进一步了解为什么截肢者在截肢几十年后仍能感受到他们失去的手的生动感觉，以及我们如何帮助减轻幻肢痛。为了更好地理解这些过程，我们结合了在健康参与者和相关临床人群中进行的实验模型。我们希望我们的研究将使临床人群和那些依赖运动增强的人能够利用大脑可塑性的好处，而不是遭受其不利影响。

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.