International Journal of Neurorehabilitation

The Plasticity of Brain Networks as a Basis for a Science of Nervous System Rehabilitation

Abstract

Gerry Leisman* and Robert Melillo

The paper overviews physiologic efficiencies to provide justification for moving away from a medical model of rehabilitation using a binary conceptualization of impairment and moving towards a linear model of optimization and human efficiencies. While the clinical and neuropathological evaluation of neurological compromise has traditionally concentrated upon the focal distribution of brain disease, ignored have been the changes in the complex connections linking brain areas crucial for cognition and optimized human performance. The paper reviews the nature of nervous system plasticity, from a systems standpoint using language development and bilingualism as well as music and the brain as examples of optimized network functioning.