Adaptive learning: interventions for verbal and motor deficits.

Advances in basic and clinical neuroscience are uniting to form new optimism for treatment and rehabilitation of persons with a variety of neurologic disorders. Both cognitive and motor systems have shown remarkable degrees of plasticity in response to incoming stimuli. Understanding the brain (and spinal cord) capacity for change will lead to new topics for research as well as new approaches to rehabilitation. Adaptive learning has been shown to be a fundamental part of the developmental process and has been used in remediation of a variety of language difficulties. Using such principles to approach motor functions also is showing promise. Expanding these observations to encompass other areas of disease and rehabilitation is an area for further research. Interdisciplinary approaches including the fields of computer technology, imaging, and genetic analysis will provide new tools. Contribution of new concepts within adaptive learning must address such topics as the relation between motor and sensory responses, measures that accurately indicate cognitive health, the brain and spinal cord areas involved in particular learning tasks, the optimal time windows for intervention, and the importance of behavior and motivation in treatment and rehabilitation.