Peripheral Somatosensory Stimulation Induced Cortical Plasticity and its Clinical Application on Functional Restoration in Chronic Stroke.

Somatosensory input is required for motor control and motor learning. It has been shown that a short period of peripheral somatosensory stimulation (PSS), leads to increases in motor cortical excitability and enhancement of motor memory encoding that outlast the stimulation period. However, the mechanisms by which PSS modulates cortical activities and its clinical application in restoring functions after brain injuries are not completely understood. Here, we conduced two sets of experiments to address these issues