And that's not all! You'll also receive a complimentary bag with an inspiring quote. Code copied to clipboard! Valid Until: 15 December If you require assistance, contact us at orders intechopen. Open access. Published: 31 May Edited by T.
Dorina Papageorgiou, George I. Christopoulos and Stelios M. Neuroimaging, and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging fMRI in particular, has brought dramatic changes in all fields of brain studies, one notable field under intensive development being that of brain plasticity.
It is important to recognize that drawing engages a wide range of spatial manipulation abilities e. Furthermore, the development of the Cognitive-Kinesthetic Drawing Method Likova, a ; 2 a ,b; β a novel method to train drawing even without vision β makes it possible to use drawing to study cross-modal reorganization in visual areas activated by non-visual tasks. A further advanced aspect of the studies is that populations with different degrees of development of the visual system were investigated.
These populations ranged from sighted under blindfolded conditions , through late-onset blind with past visual experience, to congenitally blind who have never experienced any visual stimulation. A problem specific to brain plasticity studies in the blind is that usually they do not include direct causal manipulation, such as training, but simply make a cross-sectional comparison of activation in the blind to that in the sighted.
In contrast, the studies in this chapter have taken a training-based approach by capitalizing on my Cognitive-Kinesthetic Method, coupled with a novel memory paradigm based on drawing. Furthermore, comparative analyses between the subject populations allowed us to evaluate novel hypotheses on cross-modal brain plasticity, and suggested a reconceptualization of basic principles of the functional architecture of the brain.
