Conservative motor systems, behavioral modulation and neural plasticity

Neural plasticity is a term that encompasses a vast array of changes in the nervous system in response to a wide range of environmental disturbances. The conservative manner in which nervous systems produce behavior is explored in the act of scratching the head. Whether the scratching is done with the hind leg (flamingos and axis deer) or the hand (spider monkey), it is shown that, when scratching their heads, animals follow a simple rule to avoid making multiple movements simultaneously with different parts of their bodies. Closer inspection of such a computational cost-saving scheme reveals that neural plasticity may best enhance motor performance when it occurs at higher levels of brain organization. The example of how complex social behavior, play fighting, is organized in rats shows that cortical systems can modify the contextual use of species-typical, or well-learned, behavior patterns, rather than producing new behavior patterns.