Brain plasticity is often described as the capacity of the nervous system to change in response to development, experience, injury, disease, or treatment. That definition is useful, but it can obscure two clinically important points: plasticity is bi...
Background: Chronic exposure to addictive substances induces persistent alterations in neural dynamics, reflecting maladaptive brain plasticity. While such changes are well documented using neuroimaging techniques, their electrophysiological signatur...
The maladaptive response of the central nervous system (CNS) following nerve injury is primarily linked to the activation of glial cells (reactive gliosis) that produce an inflammatory reaction and a wide cellular morpho-structural and functional/met...
The United States is currently facing a drug overdose epidemic. The nucleus accumbens core (NAcore), a brain region critical for reward and aversion behaviors, undergoes structural and functional synaptic adaptations in response to chronic drug expos...
Background: Spinal cord injury (SCI) frequently leads to pain, leading to significant disability. Pain sensitization, a key feature of SCI, is commonly assessed via quantitative sensory testing like the Pressure Pain Threshold (PPT), though the facto...
One of the challenges of the mature nervous system is to maintain the stability of neural networks while providing a degree of plasticity to generate experience-dependent modifications. This plasticity–stability dynamism is regulated by perineu...
Long-term noise exposure often results in noise induced hearing loss (NIHL). Tinnitus, the generation of phantom sounds, can also result from noise exposure, although understanding of its underlying mechanisms are limited. Recent studies, however, ar...
Background/Objectives: Chronic pain is associated with autonomic nervous system (ANS) dysfunction, which can be indexed by heart rate variability (HRV). This cross-sectional study examined associations between ANS dysregulation and phantom limb pain...
A critical role of the peripheral axons of nociceptors of the dorsal root ganglion (DRG) is the conduction of all-or-nothing action potentials from peripheral nerve endings to the central nervous system for the perception of noxious stimuli. Plastici...
Piezo1 is an increasingly recognised mechanosensitive ion channel that transduces mechanical forces into electrical and biochemical signals and is expressed in peripheral sensory pathways as well as across multiple cell types within the central nervo...
Stress may serve multiple roles in cerebral functioning, ranging from a highly appropriate behavioral adaptation to a critical risk factor for susceptibility to mood disorder and cognitive impairment. It is well known that E/I (excitation/inhibition)...
Chronic pain, a complex multidimensional disorder, remains a major healthcare issue and a therapeutic challenge. Neuropathic pain is a chronic pain condition that results from damage or dysfunction in the nervous system. While mechanisms of neuropath...
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive and degenerative disease producing the most common type of dementia worldwide. The main pathogenetic hypothesis in recent decades has been the well-known amyloidogenic hypothesis based on the involvemen...
Well-tolerated and effective drugs for treating chronic pain conditions are urgently needed. Most chronic pain patients are not effectively relieved from their pain and suffer from debilitating drug side effects. This has not only drastic negative co...
Stroke is a major challenge in modern medicine and understanding the role of the neuronal extracellular matrix (NECM) in its pathophysiology is fundamental for promoting brain repair. Currently, stroke research is focused on the neurovascular unit (N...
Most populations of Scots pine in Spain are locally adapted to drought, with only a few populations at the southernmost part of the distribution range showing maladaptations to the current climate. Increasing tree heights are predicted for most of th...
In order to determine the adaptive potential of silver fir in the southeast of Poland, the stability of the height of its five-year-old progeny was analyzed. The study was conducted in two different population groups in a total of four environments,...
Background/Objectives: Neuroplasticity is crucial for functional adaptation after spinal cord injury (SCI). Both adaptive/maladaptive changes occur across the cortical/subcortical/spinal levels, influencing recovery, compensation, and long-term compl...
The consequences of alcohol drinking during pregnancy are dramatic and usually referred to as fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD). This condition is one of the main causes of intellectual disability in Western countries. The immature fetal brain...
In this brief review, we present evidence of the primary role of learning-associated plasticity in the development of either adaptive or maladaptive coping strategies. Successful interactions with novel stressors foster plasticity within the neural c...
Neuroplasticity is a robust mechanism by which the central nervous system attempts to adapt to a structural or chemical disruption of functional connections between neurons. Mechanical damage from spinal cord injury potentiates via neuroinflammation...
Tinnitus is correlated with anomalies of neural plasticity and has been found to be affected by inflammatory status. The current theories on tinnitus, although still somewhat incomplete, are based on maladaptive plasticity mechanisms. Astrocytes play...
The synaptic cleft has been vastly investigated in the last decades, leading to a novel and fascinating model of the functional and structural modifications linked to synaptic transmission and brain processing. The classic neurocentric model encompas...
L-DOPA-induced dyskinesia (LID) remains the most challenging complication of dopamine replacement therapy in Parkinson’s disease, correlated with maladaptive plasticity within corticostriatal circuits. Perineuronal nets (PNNs), extracellular ma...
Aging-related changes have been identified at virtually every level of the central auditory system. One of the most common findings across these nuclei is a loss of synaptic inhibition with aging, which has been proposed to be at the heart of several...
Many organisms facultatively produce different phenotypes depending on their environment, yet relatively little is known about the genetic bases of such plasticity in natural populations. In this study, we describe the genetic variation underlying an...
Neuropathic pain is an intractable chronic pain, caused by damage to the somatosensory nervous system. To date, treatment for neuropathic pain has limited effects. For the development of efficient therapeutic methods, it is essential to fully underst...
A long-standing question in stress physiology is when and how the adaptive stress response can become maladaptive. In this narrative review primarily focusing on experimental studies in (male) animals, we argue that this is not merely a semantic matt...
Human life expectancy has risen dramatically in the last century, but this demographic triumph has come at the cost of an explosion of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), threatening the sustainability of healthcare systems in aging, low-fertility soci...
In dystonic and spastic movement disorders, however different in their pathophysiological mechanisms, a similar impairment of sensorimotor control with special emphasis on afferentation is assumed. Peripheral intervention on afferent inputs evokes pl...
Even in the era of effective antiretroviral therapies, people living with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) are burdened with debilitating neurological dysfunction, such as HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND) and HIV-associated pain, for...
Neuroplasticity is an “umbrella term” referring to the complex, multifaceted physiological processes that mediate the ongoing structural and functional modifications occurring, at various time- and size-scales, in the ever-changing immature and adult...
Neurological injury induces widespread neuroplastic changes that extend well beyond focal structural damage, altering synaptic function, circuit dynamics, and large-scale network organization. While these processes provide the biological substrate fo...
The timing of male meiosis plays a pivotal role in ensuring successful pollination and may represent a critical window during which environmental stressors can significantly impact reproductive outcomes. In anemophilous plants, both the quantity of m...
Dopamine is a key neurotransmitter involved in physiological processes such as motor control, motivation, reward, cognitive function, and maternal and reproductive behaviors. Therefore, dysfunctions of the dopaminergic system are related to a plethor...
While the trait of absorption has received a considerable amount of scientific study, states of absorption have been comparatively understudied and even less scholarly or scientific attention has been paid to those that are cultivated within the cont...
Bidirectional communication between the central nervous system and the immune system is crucial for brain function, particularly in regulating neuroplasticity: on the one hand, glial cells modulate neuronal function, brain circuitry, axon myelination...
Chronic pain is a complex and persistent condition involving sustained nociceptive input, maladaptive neuroplastic changes, and neuroimmune interactions. Central to its pathophysiology is the dysregulation of neuromodulatory signaling pathways, inclu...
Despite its significance, hysteresis remains underrepresented in mainstream models of plasticity. In this work, we propose a novel framework that explicitly models hysteresis in simple one- and two-neuron models. Our models capture key feedback-depen...
Peripheral tissue injury initiates a multifaceted cascade of structural and molecular modifications within nociceptors, the primary sensory neurons tasked with detecting noxious stimuli. These alterations play a crucial role in the induction and main...
Spasticity is a common complication after spinal cord injury (SCI) that significantly diminishes quality of life and complicates daily management. As a hallmark of upper motor neuron lesions, spasticity emerges through a complex post-injury process i...
Glycogen synthase kinase 3β (GSK3) is a multifaceted serine/threonine (S/T) kinase expressed in all eukaryotic cells. GSK3β is highly enriched in neurons in the central nervous system where it acts as a central hub for intracellular signali...
Neuropathic pain (NP) is a prevalent clinical condition resulting from diseases or injuries affecting the somatosensory system. Conventional analgesics often exhibit limited efficacy, leading to suboptimal therapeutic outcomes. The pathogenesis of NP...
Objectives: Spinal cord injury (SCI) disrupts the microstructure of the spinal cord, triggers reorganization of the brain network, and causes motor deficits. However, the temporal dynamics and interrelationships of these alterations remain unclear. M...
Ketamine, originally developed as an anesthetic, is gaining increasing attention due to its multifaceted pharmacological properties. In addition to its use in anesthesia, ketamine exerts potent analgesic effects via N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) recept...
A crucial etiological component in fetal programming is early nutrition. Indeed, early undernutrition may cause a chronic increase in blood pressure and cardiovascular diseases, including stroke and heart failure. In this regard, current evidence has...
Fibromyalgia is a chronic nociplastic pain condition frequently accompanied by affective disturbances, particularly depression, for which effective treatments remain limited. Increasing evidence implicates central oxidative stress, maladaptive synapt...
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is characterized by progressive dopaminergic degeneration and maladaptive motor cortical plasticity. However, the cellular pathways underlying cortical surface activity in the primary motor cortex (M1) remain unclear, d...
Adenylyl cyclases (ACs) are key regulators of cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) signaling—a pathway critical for neuroregeneration, synaptic plasticity, and neuronal survival. In both the central and peripheral nervous systems, injury-induc...
Background: Aging brains are shaped by a persistent dialogue between declining neurogenesis and rising neuroinflammation. Neural stem cells progressively lose regenerative capacity, while microglia and astrocytes shift toward maladaptive states that...
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