Cortical plasticity contributing to variations in human performance ability

Summary form only given. Studies conducted in developing and adult rats and monkeys have been designed to determine sources of variation in performance ability in infant and young adult brains. They indicate the importance of variations in signal-to-noise conditions. Brain plasticity models have also been applied to identify catastrophic failure modes of self-organizing brain systems. On the bases of these studies, novel rehabilitation strategies have been developed that are designed to ameliorate the symptoms of human developmental impairments and disabilities. For children with language and reading impairments, dramatic behavioral improvements are achieved by this training. Those behavioral changes are paralleled by a substantial physiological re-normalization documented by EEG, MEG and fMRI recording methods.