Background

TCNL research is based on the principle that the brain can reorganize its operation in response to new information sources, new functional needs, or new communication pathways. This is called neuroplasticity, a rapidly-growing area in the field of neuroscience. (See, for example, the recent popular book by Norman Doidge, The Brain that Changes Itself, New York: Penguin Books, 2007.)

Neuroplasticity, or changes in the structure of nerve cells or groups of nerve cells, is regulated both by patterns of use/disuse as well as the chemical environment in which the cells operate. This chemical "soup" influences, or modulates, how nerve cells communicate with each other. This is called neuromodulation, and it plays a major role in functional recovery from brain injury, or neurorehabilitation.

Neuroplasticity also results in the brain being able to use new sources of information, for example a person who is blind using a long cane (touch or tactile sense) rather than vision to understand the spatial arrangement of the surrounding environment. This is called sensory substitution — replacing one sense with another.

Together, neurorehabilitation and sensory subsitution potentially provide hope for at least partial functional recovery for persons who have impaired sensory function (vision, hearing, balance, touch) or impaired brain functions (motor and cognitive impairments due to stroke, brain injury, neurodegenerative disease).

TCNL is conducting basic and applied research in the use of tactile displays to provide information for sensory substitution, and in the use of non-invasive neuromodulation methods for neurorehabilitation. We call our method Cranial-Nerve Non-Invasive Neuromodulation (CN-NINM).