Neurophysiologic studies of brain plasticity in children with cerebral palsy.

The mechanisms of brain plasticity include: a change in the balance of excitation and inhibition; a long-term potentiation or long-term depression; a change in neuronal membrane excitability; the anatomical changes-formation of new axon terminals and new synapses. There are few tools for brain plasticity investigations. The utility of the neurophysiologic in the determination of brain reorganization and repair in patients with cerebral palsy (CP) are described. The authors discuss also their results of quantitative EEG, visual evoked potentials (VEPs) and somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs) in children with CP. They showed the existence of brain reorganization and repair in children with CP.