Thread by @dillannewbold

After 10 years in #neuroscience as an undergrad and #PhD student, I'm thrilled to announce my first ever scientific paper: Plasticity and Spontaneous Activity Pulses in Disused Human Brain Circuits
cell.com/neuron/fulltex…
(thread below)

@ndosenbach, @hashtagAshleyN and one other crazy neuroscientist wore casts on their dominant arms for two weeks. They all lost ~40 lb of grip strength

Following the Precision Functional Mapping approach developed by @DosenbachLab @club_scan @russpoldrack @GrattonCaterina @DeannaJGreene @RodBraga and many others, we collected 30 minutes of resting-state fMRI every day for 42-64 consecutive days

We predicted that disuse of one arm would block typical co-activation of the left and right motor cortex and cause a gradual loss of functional connectivity. That's pretty much what we found, except that the FC changes occurred rapidly and were larger than we could have imagined

The biggest surprise came when we looked directly at our recordings from the left motor cortex. We found large, spontaneous pulses of activity that began after 1-2 days of casting

Pulses did not only happen in the motor cortex, but propagated throughout the entire disused motor system

Brain circuits seem to require regular use to maintain their functional organization. In the absence of regular use, spontaneous pulses may help to maintain activity within disused circuits. Very excited for future work to look for related phenomena in #Neurology and #Psychiatry