Long-term potentiation (LTP) is a mechanism of experience-dependent synaptic plasticity that depends on glutamatergic transmission at NMDARs and is the leading candidate mechanism of learning and memory. While basic neuroscience research has yielded an understanding of the molecular substrates and functional significance of LTP, our ability to translate these findings to human neuroplasticity has been limited by the lack of valid, non-invasive methods.

Recently, however, human sensory stimulation paradigms have been developed that demonstrate LTP-like plasticity, with EEG-based evoked potentials (EPs) as readouts of plasticity effects. Visual variants of these paradigms are analogous to animal LTP paradigms involving electrical stimulation and provide translational bridges to rodent studies demonstrating LTP in visual cortex following repeated visual stimulus presentations [1], a plasticity mechanism thought to subserve visual perceptual learning. Plasticity induced by such paradigms conforms to characteristics of synaptic LTP, including induction by repeated “Hebbian” stimulation, persistence (≥1 h), stimulus-specific potentiation, and temporal/spatial specificity.

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