Chapter 21 - Repetitive Sensory Stimulation—A Canonical Approach to Control the Induction of Human Learning at a Behavioral and Neural Level

Abstract

Abstract Under real-life conditions, humans learn largely through practicing and repetition. In the laboratory exploiting adequate timing of pulse trains, learning is induced merely through electrical stimulation of brain cells and synapses. The present approach closes a gap between these extremes by translating protocols that induce plasticity at a cellular level into sensory stimulation protocols. By applying long-term potentiation-like or long-term depression-like sensory stimulation, lasting changes in human perception and in neural processing can be induced without any explicit task training and without attending to the stimulation. In this chapter, we discuss the rationales of this approach, technical approaches of how repetitive sensory stimulation can be applied in different sensory modalities, and we summarize major findings from the somatosensory system about changes of perception and remodeling of cortical processing following repetitive sensory stimulation. We discuss a framework that explains the effectiveness of this form of learning by the fact that the stimulation protocols used are near-optimal to alter synaptic transmission. The available data imply that repetitive sensory stimulation offers a novel way to investigate in humans the relation between learning and cellular and molecular mechanisms and to explore alternative strategies for intervention and therapy in patients with neurological diseases.