NEUROPLASTIC AND BEHAVIORAL CHANGES FOLLOWING PRISM ADAPTATION

Prismatic or Prism adaptation (PA) is a particular visuomotor procedure that through the deviation of visual field and a motor task influences brain activity (Redding & Wallace, 2006). Initially developed 1998, when Rossetti et al. study showed an improvement of neglected hemispace exploring emineglected stroke patients, the number of studies focused on PA was greatly increased. The PA effects were investigated in healthy subjects as well as in patients in different tasks targeting different cognitive functions. A large number of applications of PA procedure was developed in the different studies but the majority of the procedures includes a movement task during the wearing of lenses that deviate the visual field of the subjects. Functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) studies have showed, prevalently, a recruitment of cerebellum and parietal cortex during PA procedure. Moreover, recent evidences (Bracco et al., 2017) have shown an increase of motor cortex activity during the task. The present work presents the results of a series of experiments aimed at identifying new applications of PA. The work is structured in three chapters. In the first chapter we will present an overview of PA thought analysing the different techniques, settings, and neuro-correlates of the procedure. In the second chapter we will be present a brief analysis of the pre-existing literature about PA and postural effects, followed by an experimental work about baropodometric and hand strength changes after PA. In the third chapter we will present an experimental work about the effects of PA in Phonemic Fluency and discuss the main results with reference to pre-existing literature about PA effects in cognitive function. I declare that all the articles reported in this dissertation are reproduced according to the Creative Commons policy (CC-BY) or with the permission of the journals.