Visual cortex recruitment during language processing in blind individuals is explained by Hebbian learning

Tomasello, Rosario; Wennekers, Thomas; Garagnani, Max; Pulvermüller, Friedemann

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-39864-1

Cited by 33 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 135 publications

(227 reference statements)

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“…Even if responses to language in the visual system of adult-onset blind individuals are not behaviorally relevant, they support the hypothesis that communication between visual and language systems exists even in individuals whose brain developed with vision (Tomasello, Garagnani, Wennekers, & Pulvermüller, 2019). As noted above, we observed small but reliable effects in the secondary but not primary visual areas of sighted blindfolded individuals as well, i.e.…”

Section: A Sensitive Period In the Neural Substrates Of Language In Bsupporting

confidence: 72%

A sensitive period in the neural phenotype of language in blind individuals

Pant

Kanjlia²,

Bedny³

2019

Preprint

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In congenital blindness, "visual" cortices respond to linguistic information, and fronto-temporal language networks are less left-lateralized. Does this plasticity follow a sensitive period? We tested this by comparing the neural basis of sentence processing in two experiments with adult-onset blind (AB, n=16), congenitally blind (CB, n=22) and blindfolded sighted controls (n=18). In Experiment 1, participants made semantic judgments for spoken sentences and solved math equations in a control condition. In Experiment 2, participants answered "who did what to whom" questions for grammatically complex (with syntactic movement) and grammatically simpler sentences. In a control condition, participants performed a memory task with lists of non-words. In both experiments, visual cortices of CB and AB but not sighted participants responded more to sentences than control conditions, but the effect was much larger in the CB group. Crucially, only the "visual" cortex of CB participants responded to grammatical complexity. Unlike the CB group, the AB group showed no reduction in left-lateralization of fronto-temporal language network relative to the sighted. These results suggest that blindness during development modifies the neural basis of language, and this effect follows a sensitive period.

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Section: A Sensitive Period In the Neural Substrates Of Language In Bsupporting

confidence: 72%

A sensitive period in the neural phenotype of language in blind individuals

Pant

Kanjlia²,

Bedny³

2019

Preprint

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“…Many classical studies conducted in nonhuman primates focusing on sensory and motor cortices have demonstrated that cortical representations, even in adulthood, are modifiable by experience (Kaas, 1991;Buonomano and Merzenich, 1998). A host of explanations for these changes have been proposed including longterm potentiation and depression of excitatory postsynaptic potentials as well as selective strengthening of excitatory intracortical input (Sun et al, 2019) and Hebbian learning (Tomasello et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perceptual Function and Category-Selective Neural Organization in Children with Resections of Visual Cortex

Freud

Patterson

et al. 2019

J. Neurosci.

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The consequences of cortical resection, a treatment for humans with pharmaco-resistant epilepsy, provide a unique opportunity to advance our understanding of the nature and extent of cortical (re)organization. Despite the importance of visual processing in daily life, the neural and perceptual sequellae of occipitotemporal resections remain largely unexplored. Using psychophysical and fMRI investigations, we compared the neural and visuoperceptual profiles of 10 children or adolescents following unilateral cortical resections and their age-and gender-matched controls. Dramatically, with the exception of two individuals, both of whom had relatively greater cortical alterations, all patients showed normal perceptual performance on tasks of intermediate-and high-level vision, including face and object recognition. Consistently, again with the exception of the same two individuals, both univariate and multivariate fMRI analyses revealed normal selectivity and representational structure of category-selective regions. Furthermore, the spatial organization of categoryselective regions obeyed the typical medial-to-lateral topographic organization albeit unilaterally in the structurally preserved hemisphere rather than bilaterally. These findings offer novel insights into the malleability of cortex in the pediatric population and suggest that, although experience may be necessary for the emergence of neural category-selectivity, this emergence is not necessarily contingent on the integrity of particular cortical structures.

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“…For example, studies that were performed with fMRI [35][36][37][38] and event-related potentials (ERPs [39,40]) show that the visual cortex shows a strong and reliable response to sound presented alone. Tomasello et al [41] have recently proposed a neurocomputational model to explain the visual cortex recruitment during language processing in congenitally blind individuals. For what concerns space representation, Collignon and colleagues [42] compared the brain activity of early blind and sighted individuals during a spatial and pitch task using the same stimuli for both.…”

Section: Cortical Processing Of Space and Blindnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Audio Cortical Processing in Blind Individuals

Gori¹,

Amadeo²,

Sandini³

et al. 2020

Visual Impairment and Blindness - What We Know and What We Have to Know

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This chapter focuses on the cortical processing of auditory spatial information in blindness. Research has demonstrated enhanced auditory processing in blind individuals, suggesting they compensate for lacking vision with greater sensitivity in other senses. A few years ago, we demonstrated severely impaired auditory precision in congenitally blind individuals when performing an auditory spatial metric task: participants' thresholds for spatially bisecting three consecutive, spatially distributed sound sources were seriously compromised. Here we describe psychophysical and neural correlates of this deficit, and we show that the deficit disappears if blind individuals are presented with coherent spatio-temporal cues (short space associated with short time and vice versa). Instead, when the audio information presents incoherent spatio-temporal cues (short space associated with long time and vice versa), sighted individuals are unaffected by the perturbation while blind individuals are strongly attracted to the temporal cue. These results suggest that blind participants use temporal cues to make audio spatial estimations and that the visual cortex seems to have a functional role in these perceptual tasks. In the present chapter, we illustrate our hypothesis, suggesting that the lack of vision may drive construction of multisensory cortical network coding space based on temporal instead of spatial coordinates.

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Visual cortex recruitment during language processing in blind individuals is explained by Hebbian learning

Cited by 33 publications

References 135 publications

A sensitive period in the neural phenotype of language in blind individuals

A sensitive period in the neural phenotype of language in blind individuals

Perceptual Function and Category-Selective Neural Organization in Children with Resections of Visual Cortex

Audio Cortical Processing in Blind Individuals

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