ABSTRACT
During the last two decades or so, the once strongly held point of view that enduring changes in cortical properties are only possible in the developing brain has made room for the now widely accepted concept that this holds for the adult brain as well. The capacity for plasticity or functional re-organization in adult brains has now been documented for different sensory modalities (visual, auditory, and somatosensory), from cortex to sub-thalamic levels. Plasticity in the adult brain has been most frequently studied in primary sensory and motor areas which therefore serve as model systems for cortical plasticity (Calford, 2002).
