ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the functional and neural mechanisms that shape the brain architecture following postnatal experience. It describes the processes according to which developing and adult brains interact and adapt to environmental stimuli, physiological changes, learning, sensory deprivation and brain damage. The term epigenetic refers to functionally relevant changes to the genome that do not involve a change in the nucleotide sequence. Brain development is guided by innate mechanisms, some of them similar in all mammals, but some events during the course of evolution led to specific qualitative and quantitative changes in the human species. The most important factor shaping structural plasticity is represented by the white matter changes. Although in non-mammal species adult neurogenesis is widespread, until a few years ago many neurobiologists thought that the process of neurogenesis was absent in mammals. Musician's dystonia (MD) or musicians' cramp is characterized by incoordination or loss of voluntary movement control of extensively trained movements.
