Understanding and promoting plasticity within the human visual cortex

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One basic difference between children and adults is that children’s brains have a much greater propensity for change; i.e. children’s brains are more ‘plastic’ than adult brains. Reduced plasticity in the adult brain has direct implications for the learning of new skills and recovery from damage to the brain through trauma, disease or abnormal development. The proposed research will address two key questions: 1) how can plasticity be increased in the healthy adult human brain? and, 2) how and why does human brain plasticity decrease with age? The research will focus on visual brain areas because there is a wealth of neuroscientific data relating to visual cortex development and plasticity in animals that can directly inform research into human brain plasticity.