TY  - JOUR
A1  - Müller-Dahlhaus, Florian
A1  - Ziemann, Ulf
A1  - Classen, Joseph
T1  - Plasticity resembling spike-timing dependent synaptic plasticity: the evidence in human cortex
T2  - Frontiers in synaptic neuroscience
N2  - Spike-timing dependent plasticity (STDP) has been studied extensively in a variety of animal models during the past decade but whether it can be studied at the systems level of the human cortex has been a matter of debate. Only recently newly developed non-invasive brain stimulation techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) have made it possible to induce and assess timing dependent plasticity in conscious human subjects. This review will present a critical synopsis of these experiments, which suggest that several of the principal characteristics and molecular mechanisms of TMS-induced plasticity correspond to those of STDP as studied at a cellular level. TMS combined with a second phasic stimulation modality can induce bidirectional long-lasting changes in the excitability of the stimulated cortex, whose polarity depends on the order of the associated stimulus-evoked events within a critical time window of tens of milliseconds. Pharmacological evidence suggests an NMDA receptor mediated form of synaptic plasticity. Studies in human motor cortex demonstrated that motor learning significantly modulates TMS-induced timing dependent plasticity, and, conversely, may be modulated bidirectionally by prior TMS-induced plasticity, providing circumstantial evidence that long-term potentiation-like mechanisms may be involved in motor learning. In summary, convergent evidence is being accumulated for the contention that it is now possible to induce STDP-like changes in the intact human central nervous system by means of TMS to study and interfere with synaptic plasticity in neural circuits in the context of behavior such as learning and memory. Keywords: spike-timing dependent plasticity, long-term potentiation, long-term depression, paired associative stimulation, transcranial magnetic stimulation, human, cortex, translational neuroscience
KW  - spike-timing dependent plasticity
KW  - long-term potentiation
KW  - long-term depression
KW  - paired associative stimulation
KW  - transcranial magnetic stimulation
Y1  - 2010
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/20116
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30-83884
SN  - 1663-3563
N1  - Copyright:  © 2010 Müller-Dahlhaus, Ziemann and Classen. This is an open-access article subject to an exclusive license agreement between the authors and the Frontiers Research Foundation, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited.
VL  - 2
IS  - 34
PB  - Frontiers Research Foundation
CY  - Lausanne
ER  -