Ido Tavor1, Yaniv Sagi1, Shir
Hofstetter1, Efrat Sasson1, Yaniv Assaf1
1Neurobiology,
Tel Aviv university, Tel Aviv, Israel
Neuroimaging
studies of brain plasticity reveal long-term learning related structural
changes in several brain regions. Animal studies revealed that short term
micro-structural changes can be observed with diffusion MRI. Here, we study
the diffusion MRI changes in a short term spatial memory task in humans.
Subjects underwent two MRI scans separated by two hours of a learning
session. We found that DTI parameters had changed in several brain regions,
including the hippocampus, entorhinal cortex, amygdala and insula. The main
result of this work is that DTI can follow on learning-induced
micro-structural tissue changes, already 2 hours following the training
episode.