NeuroScouting LLC, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Biol Psychiatry. 2012 Mar 15;71(6):496-502. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2011.08.021. Epub 2011 Oct 5.
Long-term potentiation (LTP) is a synaptic mechanism underlying learning and memory that has been studied extensively in laboratory animals. The study of LTP recently has been extended into humans with repetitive sensory stimulation to induce cortical LTP. In this review article, we will discuss past results from our group demonstrating that repetitive sensory stimulation (visual or auditory) induces LTP within the sensory cortex (visual/auditory, respectively) and can be measured noninvasively with electroencephalography or functional magnetic resonance imaging. We will discuss a number of studies that indicate that this form of LTP shares several characteristics with the synaptic LTP described in animals: it is frequency dependent, long-lasting (> 1 hour), input-specific, depotentiates with low-frequency stimulation, and is blocked by N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor blockers in rats. In this review, we also present new data with regard to the behavioral significance of human sensory LTP. These advances will permit enquiry into the functional significance of LTP that has been hindered by the absence of a human model. The ability to elicit LTP with a natural sensory stimulus noninvasively will provide a model system allowing the detailed examination of synaptic plasticity in normal subjects and might have future clinical applications in the diagnosis and assessment of neuropsychiatric and neurocognitive disorders.
长时程增强（LTP）是学习和记忆的一种突触机制，在实验室动物中得到了广泛的研究。最近，通过重复感觉刺激来诱导皮质 LTP，已经将 LTP 的研究扩展到人类。在这篇综述文章中，我们将讨论我们小组过去的研究结果，证明重复的感觉刺激（视觉或听觉）在感觉皮层（分别为视觉/听觉）中诱导 LTP，并且可以通过脑电图或功能磁共振成像进行非侵入性测量。我们将讨论一些研究，表明这种形式的 LTP 与动物中描述的突触 LTP 具有几个共同特征：它是频率依赖性的、持久的（>1 小时）、输入特异性的、低频刺激会去极化、并且在大鼠中被 N-甲基-D-天冬氨酸受体阻滞剂阻断。在这篇综述中，我们还提出了关于人类感觉 LTP 的行为意义的新数据。这些进展将允许对 LTP 的功能意义进行研究，而这种研究一直受到缺乏人类模型的阻碍。用自然感觉刺激非侵入性地引发 LTP 的能力将提供一个模型系统，允许在正常受试者中详细检查突触可塑性，并且可能在神经精神和神经认知障碍的诊断和评估方面具有未来的临床应用。
