The Concept of Metaplasticity

ABSTRACT

The concept of metaplasticity entails a change in the physiological or biochemical state of synapses that alters their ability to generate synaptic plasticity by integrating individual synaptic events. The characteristics of metaplasticity would be the fact that those synaptic changes last in certain period time with association of activity in time, homosynaptically or heterosynaptically. Recently introduced non-invasive brain stimulation enables us to observe the metaplastic changes in vivo, which would give us a insight in developing new effective therapeutic approach based on synaptic plasticity and metaplasticity.