Adaptive and maladaptive brain plasticity

Our brain's ability to adapt how it processes inputs based on changed experience (brain plasticity) is considered a key mechanism for supporting how we learn new skills and recover from injury. Hand function is essential for most aspects of daily life, and as such provides a rich model for studying brain function and plasticity. We aim to understanding how the brain best supports hand function and how it can best cope with hand dysfunction. We are particularly interested in studying how we could use technology to increase hand functionality in able and disabled individuals at all ages. For example, we want to know what happens to the cortical territories of the hand following arm amputation, and understand how the brain best supports the acquisition of new skills necessary for amputees to adapt to their disability, including prosthetic limb usage and augmentative technology such as the Third Thumb (Dani Clode Design). We are also interested in further understanding why amputees experience vivid sensations of their missing hand many decades after amputation, and how we could help alleviate phantom limb pain. To understand these processes better, we combine experimental models, performed on healthy participants, and related clinical populations. We hope that our research will enable clinical populations and those relying on motor augmentation to take advantage of the benefits of brain plasticity, rather than to suffer from their adverse effects.

We study the extent to which brain areas supporting perception and action are shaped by experience. Our research focuses on hand representation and how it is modulated by hand loss and consequential compensatory behaviour. We aim to develop a mechanistic understanding of the neural basis of hand function and dysfunction, and understand how we could use technology to increase hand functionality in able and disabled individuals at all ages. A primary model for this work is studying differently abled individuals, and arm amputees in particular. We integrate methods from the fields of neuroscience, experimental psychology, engineering and rehabilitation to comprehensively study how habitual behaviour, such as prosthesis usage or motor augmentation, shapes brain plasticity. Key science questions include: (1) Input-loss versus input-driven plasticity? We are interested in understanding the potential link between sensory deprivation (input loss) and adaptive behaviour. (2) Brain plasticity and adaptive behaviour across development. To understand the extent to which behaviour shapes functional brain organisation, we study the brain as new behaviour is being developed, both habitually in children and during skill learning in adults. (3) Neural mechanisms of phantom sensations and pain. We aim to develop new paradigms in order to probe the mechanisms underlying the generation of phantom sensations and PLP both within and beyond the sensorimotor system. (4) Artificial limb representation for motor substitution. Our work explores whether neural resources, uniquely developed for hand representation, become repurposed to support artificial limbs, and whether neural “embodiment” of prosthetic limbs can be improved. (5) Brain plasticity for body augmentation. We wish to understand what resources can the brain employ to control a body part that has never been there before? To facilitate this research, the research programme is augmented by independent funding obtained from the Wellcome Trust (Senior Research Fellowship), European Research Council (Starting Grants), UKRI Frontier Research Guarantee scheme (to underwrite a successful ERC Consolidator Grants) and UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (Research Grant). We hope that our research will enable clinical populations and those relying on motor augmentation to take advantage of the benefits of brain plasticity, rather than to suffer from their adverse effects.