Abstract
Motor training can induce profound physiological plasticity within primary motor cortex, including changes in corticospinal output and motor map topography. Using transcranial magnetic stimulation, we show that training-dependent increases in the amplitude of motor-evoked potentials and motor map reorganization are reduced in healthy subjects with a val66met polymorphism in the brain-derived neurotrophic factor gene (BDNF), as compared to subjects without the polymorphism. The results suggest that BDNF is involved in mediating experience-dependent plasticity of human motor cortex.
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Acknowledgements
We thank S. Wolf, E. Orr, D. Ro and V. Le. Studies were carried out in the General Clinical Research Center, College of Medicine, University of California Irvine, with funds provided by the National Center for Research Resources (5M01RR 00827-29, NS-45563) and the US Public Health Service. Work was conducted while J.A.K. was on a leave of absence from the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience at the University of Lethbridge.
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Supplementary Table 1
Mean (+/− s.e.m.) MEP amplitude for all genotypes pre- and post-training. (PDF 50 kb)
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Kleim, J., Chan, S., Pringle, E. et al. BDNF val66met polymorphism is associated with modified experience-dependent plasticity in human motor cortex. Nat Neurosci 9, 735–737 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1699
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1699
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