Perceptually relevant remapping of human somatotopy in 24 hours

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Abstract

Experience-dependent reorganisation of functional maps in the cerebral cortex is well described in the primary sensory cortices. However, there is relatively little evidence for such cortical reorganisation over the short-term. Using human somatosensory cortex as a model, we investigated the effects of a 24-hour gluing manipulation in which the right index and right middle fingers (digits 2 & 3) were adjoined with surgical glue. Somatotopic representations, assessed with two 7 tesla fMRI protocols, revealed rapid off-target reorganisation in the non-manipulated fingers following gluing, with the representation of the ring finger (digit 4) shifted towards the little finger (digit 5) and away from the middle finger (digit 3). These shifts were also evident in two behavioural tasks conducted in an independent cohort, showing reduced sensitivity for discriminating the temporal order of stimuli to the ring and little fingers, and increased substitution errors across this pair on a speeded reaction time task.

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James Kolasinski

Oxford Centre for fMRI of the Brain, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

For correspondence
james.kolasinski@ndcn.ox.ac.uk

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-1599-6440
Tamar R Makin

Oxford Centre for fMRI of the Brain, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-5816-8979
John Patrick Logan

Oxford Centre for fMRI of the Brain, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-4469-2948
Saad Jbabdi

Oxford Centre for fMRI of the Brain, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.
Stuart Clare

Oxford Centre for fMRI of the Brain, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.
Charlotte J Stagg

Oxford Centre for fMRI of the Brain, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.
Heidi Johansen-Berg

Oxford Centre for fMRI of the Brain, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

Competing interests
Heidi Johansen-Berg, Reviewing editor, eLife.

Funding

University College, Oxford

James Kolasinski

Wellcome (104128/Z/14/Z)

Tamar R Makin

Wellcome (102584/Z/13/Z)

Charlotte J Stagg

Medical Research Council (MR/L009013/1)

Saad Jbabdi

Wellcome (110027/Z/15/Z)

Heidi Johansen-Berg

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Human subjects: All data were acquired in accordance with local central university research ethics committee approval (University of Oxford MSD-IDREC-C2-2013-05). Eighteen participants were recruited, each providing written informed consent to take part in this study, and for the results of this study to be published.

Copyright

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.