Plasticity of Sensory Cortices: From Basic to Clinical Research

A special issue of Brain Sciences (ISSN 2076-3425). This special issue belongs to the section "Sensory and Motor Neuroscience".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 March 2026 | Viewed by 495

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Service of Neurorehabilitation, Lausanne University Hospital and University of Lausanne, Av. Pierre-Decker 5, 1011 Lausanne, Switzerland
Interests: organization and plasticity of the human auditory cortex

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Guest Editor
Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois, Lausanne, Switzerland
Interests: cognition; brain injury; neurorehabilitation; visual neglect; neuroimaging; functional MRI; DSI; resting state fMRI; EEG
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Sensory cortices tend to comprise an orderly representation of their sensory organ: retinotopic representation in early-stage vision, tonotopic representation in auditory processing, and somatotopic representation in somatosensory areas. Training, altered sensory experiences, and differently placed lesions are known to induce changes in these representations. Investigations into vestibular, olfactive, and gustatory representations can provide insights into the complex mechanisms underlying these functions.

This Special Issue will present the latest studies in this field, from the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying changes in sensory representations to clinical applications, such as sensory prostheses and implants. It will also document short-term and long-term plasticity in health and disease, both in human subjects and in animal models, using behavioral, electrophysiological, fMRI, and anatomical approaches.

We invite submissions discussing the plasticity of sensory cortices. Topics of interest include the following:

  • Orderly representations of the sensory periphery;
  • Training-induced changes;
  • Post-lesional reorganization;
  • Post-stroke reorganization of sensory representations;
  • Lesion analysis in post-stroke sensory deficits;
  • Dementia-related dysfunction in sensory representations;
  • Neural underpinnings of sensory hallucinations.

Prof. Dr. Stephanie Clarke
Dr. Sonia Crottaz-Herbette
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • tonotopy
  • retinotopy
  • somatotopy
  • vestibular
  • olfactory
  • gustatory
  • training-induced plasticity
  • postlesional plasticity
  • cochlear implant
  • prostheses

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

20 pages, 5203 KB  
Article
Musical Training and Perceptual History Shape Alpha Dynamics in Audiovisual Speech Integration
by Jihyun Lee, Ji-Hye Han and Hyo-Jeong Lee
Brain Sci. 2025, 15(12), 1258; https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci15121258 - 24 Nov 2025
Viewed by 297
Abstract
Introduction: Speech perception relies on integrating auditory and visual information, shaped by both perceptual and cognitive factors. Musical training has been shown to affect multisensory processing, whereas cognitive processes, such as recalibration derived from a perceptual history, influence neural responses to upcoming sensory [...] Read more.
Introduction: Speech perception relies on integrating auditory and visual information, shaped by both perceptual and cognitive factors. Musical training has been shown to affect multisensory processing, whereas cognitive processes, such as recalibration derived from a perceptual history, influence neural responses to upcoming sensory inputs. To investigate these influences, we evaluated cortical activity associated with the McGurk illusion focusing specifically on how musical training and perceptual history affect multisensory speech perception. Methods: Musicians and age-matched nonmusicians participated in electroencephalogram experiments using a McGurk task. We analyzed five conditions on the basis of stimulus type and participants’ responses and quantified the rate of illusory percepts and cortical alpha power between groups using dynamic imaging of coherent sources. Results: No differences in McGurk susceptibility were detected between musicians and nonmusicians. Source-localized alpha, however, revealed group-specific patterns: musical training was associated with frontal alpha modulation during integration, a finding consistent with enhanced top-down control, whereas nonmusicians relied more on sensory-driven processing. Additionally, illusory responses occurred in auditory-only trials. Follow-up analyses revealed no significant alpha modulation clusters in musicians, but temporal alpha modulations in nonmusicians depending on preceding audiovisual congruency. Conclusions: These findings suggest that musical training may influence the neural mechanisms of audiovisual integration during speech perception. Specifically, musicians appear to employ enhanced top-down control involving frontal regions, whereas nonmusicians rely more on sensory-driven processing mediated by parietal and temporal regions. Furthermore, perceptual recalibration may be more prominent in nonmusicians, whereas musicians appear to focus more on current sensory input, reducing their reliance on perceptual history. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Plasticity of Sensory Cortices: From Basic to Clinical Research)
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