Impact of homeostatic plasticity on motor learning: A transcranial direct current stimulation study

Introduction: Neuroplasticity is the adaptive modification of network connectivity in response to environmental demands and has been identified as a major physiological correlate of learning. Since unrestricted neuroplastic modifications of network connectivity will result in a destabilization of the system, metaplastic modification rules have been proposed for keeping plastic connectivity changes within a useful dynamic range. In this connection, the modification threshold to achieve synaptic strengthening is thought to correlate negatively with the history of activity of the respective neurons, i.e. high previ…