Neuroplasticity in the Brain of Children with Neurological Disorders

The brains of chil­dren with neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­ders seems to exhib­it signs of neu­ro­plas­tic changes, sug­gest­ing com­pen­sato­ry mech­a­nisms for the dis­or­der. This result opens up the pos­si­bil­i­ty that brain train­ing may be use­ful to help these patients con­trol their symptoms.

The dis­or­der stud­ied was Tourette syn­drome (TS), which usu­al­ly become evi­dent in ear­ly child­hood or ado­les­cence before the age of 18 years.  The symp­toms are invol­un­tary move­ments (tics) as well as ver­bal tics or vocal­iza­tions.  These tics are fre­quent, repet­i­tive and rapid.  Most cas­es of TS are mild and peo­ple lead pro­duc­tive lives.

Par­tic­i­pants in the study (aver­age age of 14) per­formed a motor task with high lev­els of man­u­al con­flict (they had to obey instruc­tions such as press a left key in response to an arrow point­ing to the right and vice-ver­sa). Chil­dren with TS were much faster than con­trol chil­dren (with­out TS) in such a task. This sup­ports the idea that chil­dren with TS have more con­trol over motor activ­i­ty in gen­er­al, due to the con­stant require­ment to sup­press their tics. Impor­tant­ly chil­dren with the low­est response times were also the chil­dren with the least severe tics, indi­cat­ing greater motor control.

Par­tic­i­pants also under­went brain imag­ing. The microstruc­ture of the white mat­ter  in the cor­pus cal­lo­sum and the for­ceps minor (or FM, a white mat­ter track that con­nects the lat­er­al and medi­al areas of the pre­frontal cor­tex) was dif­fer­ent in the TS chil­dren com­pared to the con­trol chil­dren. The authors con­clud­ed that these changes most like­ly reflect­ed a func­tion­al adap­ta­tion to TS.

Inter­est­ing­ly, brain activ­i­ty in an area of the right pre­frontal cor­tex where FM con­nects was greater in the TS group com­pared to con­trols when per­form­ing the motor task task. The activ­i­ty in this area was relat­ed to the response times in the task for the TS group but not for the controls.

In sum, white mat­ter microstruc­ture as well as activ­i­ty in the pre­frontal cor­tex strong­ly pre­dict­ed per­for­mance in the chil­dren with Tourette syn­drome but not controls.

These results pro­vide evi­dence for com­pen­sato­ry neu­ro­log­i­cal reor­ga­ni­za­tion in chil­dren with Tourette syn­drome. This sug­gests  that brain train­ing may be an option for chil­dren suf­fer­ing from TS to help them reduce their symp­toms, i.e. con­trol their ticks.

1 Comment

  1. Dr J Douglas Brown on May 12, 2011 at 2:19

    Brain train­ing could be used but spe­cif­ic neu­rostim­u­la­tion such as an elec­tro­mag­net­ic field may be eas­i­er on the patient. Just a sug­ges­tion since we are talk­ing about chil­dren who don’t like to be messed with.



About SharpBrains

SHARPBRAINS is an independent think-tank and consulting firm providing services at the frontier of applied neuroscience, health, leadership and innovation.
SHARPBRAINS es un think-tank y consultoría independiente proporcionando servicios para la neurociencia aplicada, salud, liderazgo e innovación.

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