Differential occipital responses in early- and late-blind individuals during a sound-source discrimination task

Voss, Patrice; Gougoux, Frédéric; Zatorre, Robert J.; Lassonde, Maryse; Leporé, Franco

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.12.020

Cited by 137 publications

(159 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…Based on the present findings, we conclude that the left-lateralized occipital activity during verbal tasks reflects language processing (25,35,41). However, prior studies have shown that regions of the occipital cortex in blind individuals also contribute to multiple nonverbal tasks, such as tactile discrimination and sound localization (42,43). We hypothesize that distinct occipital regions support linguistic and nonlinguistic functions.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 67%

Language processing in the occipital cortex of congenitally blind adults

Bedny

Pascual‐Leone

Dodell-Feder

et al. 2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

366

392

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Humans are thought to have evolved brain regions in the left frontal and temporal cortex that are uniquely capable of language processing. However, congenitally blind individuals also activate the visual cortex in some verbal tasks. We provide evidence that this visual cortex activity in fact reflects language processing. We find that in congenitally blind individuals, the left visual cortex behaves similarly to classic language regions: (i) BOLD signal is higher during sentence comprehension than during linguistically degraded control conditions that are more difficult; (ii) BOLD signal is modulated by phonological information, lexical semantic information, and sentence-level combinatorial structure; and (iii) functional connectivity with language regions in the left prefrontal cortex and thalamus are increased relative to sighted individuals. We conclude that brain regions that are thought to have evolved for vision can take on language processing as a result of early experience. Innate microcircuit properties are not necessary for a brain region to become involved in language processing.plasticity | language evolution

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 67%

Language processing in the occipital cortex of congenitally blind adults

Bedny

Pascual‐Leone

Dodell-Feder

et al. 2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

366

392

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…[27] These fi nding were later confi rmed in studies of subjects with single sensory deprivation (auditory or visual) using neuroimaging techniques with greater spatial resolution (fMRI and PET), [5,[28][29][30] which demonstrated extensive cerebral reorganization in cortical areas, showing how auditory areas of the brain are activated by visual stimuli in deaf persons, [3] while the visual cortex is activated by somatosensory and auditory stimuli in blind persons. [5,28,31,32] Our fi ndings could be ascribed to this form of neuroplasticity, CMP. This would then be confi rmation of results previously obtained in subjects with single sensory deprivation (deaf or blind), well described in review articles.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 58%

Cross-modal plasticity in cuban visually-impaired child cochlear implant candidates: topography of somatosensory evoked potentials

Charroó-Ruíz¹,

Pérez-Abalo²,

Hernández³

et al. 2012

MEDICC rev.

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“…For instance, Doucet et al (2005) showed that the supranormal monaural localization performance of EB persons was significantly decreased by the occlusion of the pinna. Subsequently, Voss et al (2011) showed that when having to discriminate between sounds with spectral profiles that simulated different spatial positions based on headrelated transfer functions (HRTFs; i.e., spectral cues), the task was best performed by those EB persons displaying superior monaural sound localization abilities. Furthermore, the EB have been shown to have better sound source discrimination abilities in peripheral auditory space near the interaural axis (Röder et al, 1999;Voss et al, 2004), where binaural cues are insufficient to resolve whether a sound source lies in front or behind the axis and where spectral cues can help to resolve this ambiguity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Subsequently, Voss et al (2011) showed that when having to discriminate between sounds with spectral profiles that simulated different spatial positions based on headrelated transfer functions (HRTFs; i.e., spectral cues), the task was best performed by those EB persons displaying superior monaural sound localization abilities. Furthermore, the EB have been shown to have better sound source discrimination abilities in peripheral auditory space near the interaural axis (Röder et al, 1999;Voss et al, 2004), where binaural cues are insufficient to resolve whether a sound source lies in front or behind the axis and where spectral cues can help to resolve this ambiguity. The abovehighlighted evidence therefore leads to the hypothesis that the superior ability of some early blind individuals to localize sounds more accurately rests on their ability to make better use of spectral cues.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trade-Off in the Sound Localization Abilities of Early Blind Individuals between the Horizontal and Vertical Planes

2015

Self Cite

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There is substantial evidence that sensory deprivation leads to important cross-modal brain reorganization that is paralleled by enhanced perceptual abilities. However, it remains unclear how widespread these enhancements are, and whether they are intercorrelated or arise at the expense of other perceptual abilities. One specific area where such a trade-off might arise is that of spatial hearing, where blind individuals have been shown to possess superior monaural localization abilities in the horizontal plane, but inferior localization abilities in the vertical plane. While both of these tasks likely involve the use of monaural cues due to the absence of any relevant binaural signal, there is currently no proper explanation for this discrepancy, nor has any study investigated both sets of abilities in the same sample of blind individuals. Here, we assess whether the enhancements observed in the horizontal plane are related to the deficits observed in the vertical plane by testing sound localization in both planes in groups of blind and sighted persons. Our results show that the blind individuals who displayed the highest accuracy at localizing sounds monaurally in the horizontal plane are also the ones who exhibited the greater deficit when localizing in the vertical plane. These findings appear to argue against the idea of generalized perceptual enhancements in the early blind, and instead suggest the possibility of a trade-off in the localization proficiency between the two auditory spatial planes, such that learning to use monaural cues for the horizontal plane comes at the expense of using those cues to localize in the vertical plane.

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Differential occipital responses in early- and late-blind individuals during a sound-source discrimination task

Cited by 137 publications

References 59 publications

Language processing in the occipital cortex of congenitally blind adults

Language processing in the occipital cortex of congenitally blind adults

Cross-modal plasticity in cuban visually-impaired child cochlear implant candidates: topography of somatosensory evoked potentials

Trade-Off in the Sound Localization Abilities of Early Blind Individuals between the Horizontal and Vertical Planes

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