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Short-term plasticity in the human visual thalamus.

ABSTRACT: While there is evidence that the visual cortex retains a potential for plasticity in adulthood, less is known about the subcortical stages of visual processing. Here, we asked whether short-term ocular dominance plasticity affects the human visual thalamus. We addressed this question in normally sighted adult humans, using ultra-high field (7T) magnetic resonance imaging combined with the paradigm of short-term monocular deprivation. With this approach, we previously demonstrated transient shifts of perceptual eye dominance and ocular dominance in visual cortex (Binda et al., 2018). Here, we report evidence for short-term plasticity in the ventral division of the pulvinar (vPulv), where the deprived eye representation was enhanced over the nondeprived eye. This vPulv plasticity was similar as previously seen in visual cortex and it was correlated with the ocular dominance shift measured behaviorally. In contrast, there was no effect of monocular deprivation in two adjacent thalamic regions: dorsal pulvinar and Lateral Geniculate Nucleus. We conclude that the visual thalamus retains potential for short-term plasticity in adulthood; the plasticity effect differs across thalamic subregions, possibly reflecting differences in their corticofugal connectivity.

SUBMITTER: Kurzawski JW

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9020816 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Short-term plasticity in the human visual thalamus.

Kurzawski Jan W JW Lunghi Claudia C Biagi Laura L Tosetti Michela M Morrone Maria Concetta MC Binda Paola P

eLife 20220406

While there is evidence that the visual cortex retains a potential for plasticity in adulthood, less is known about the subcortical stages of visual processing. Here, we asked whether short-term ocular dominance plasticity affects the human visual thalamus. We addressed this question in normally sighted adult humans, using ultra-high field (7T) magnetic resonance imaging combined with the paradigm of short-term monocular deprivation. With this approach, we previously demonstrated transient shift ...[more]

PMID: 35384840

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Project description:Cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical loops have been heavily studied because of their importance in movement disorders such as Parkinson's Disease and tremor. Capturing plasticity effect in this circuit has been mainly successful using animals or using invasive electrophysiology in patients. Given the importance of the striatum and thalamus for motor control and skill learning, the current study leverages on an arm immobilization paradigm in humans with neuroimaging to induce disuse and explore human subcortical motor circuits plasticity. We employed an experimental paradigm involving upper-extremity immobilization for two weeks with daily resting-state functional connectivity (FC) and motor task-related fMRI. This approach of dense sampling of individuals, i.e Precision Functional Mapping (PFM), offers individual-specific insights and provides enough data to address the issue of low signal to noise ratio in the subcortex. Previously, we identified increased FC between somatomotor cortex and the cingulo-opercular network and emergence of disuse pulses in the cortex during casting. We expand our prior investigation to include analysis adapted to the signal characteristic of subcortical regions to capture disuse-driven plasticity in human subcortical circuits. Subcortical nodes, particularly the central thalamus and posterior putamen, exhibited strengthened FC during disuse and spontaneous activity pulses. Motor task fMRI validated that subcortical disuse-driven plasticity effects spatially correspond to the upper extremity movement execution circuitry, emphasizing the role of these structures in motor control and adaptation. In conclusion, our study highlights the involvement of the cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical loops in human motor plasticity and discuss similarities in findings with two research fields: Parkinson Disease (PD), suggesting a novel interpretation of PD neuroimaging finding; and sleep, particularly plasticity and sleep pressure regulated by the thalamus.

Dataset Information

Short-term plasticity in the human visual thalamus.

Publications

Short-term plasticity in the human visual thalamus.

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