Working memory for vibrotactile frequencies: Comparison of cortical activity in blind and sighted individuals

Burton, Harold; Sinclair, Robert J.; Dixit, Sachin

doi:10.1002/hbm.20966

Cited by 37 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 98 publications

(135 reference statements)

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“…The response to language is strongly left lateralized. By contrast, responses during nonverbal tasks are bilateral or right lateralized (44,45). Consistent with this idea, we found neuroanatomically distinct patterns of response to backward speech and language in the occipital cortex.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

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: 86%

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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“…It could be that Braille reading proficiency etihanced the capability of the blind participants tested in Forster et al's study to focus their attention on a flngertip, in order to select the information at the relevant locations and ignore that at the nearby locations. This finding adds to the results of neuroimaging studies showing that sustained focusing on tactile inputs is associated with a larger activation of parietal cortex in blind than in sighted individuals (Burton, Sinclair, & Dixit, 2010;Burton, Sinclair, & McLaren, 2004;Burton, Snyder, Diamond, & Raichle, 2002). Reorganizational effects as a result of visual experience have nevertheless also been demonstrated in other structures involved in orienting behaviors, such as, for example, the superior colliculi (e.g., Tamietto et al, 2010; for evidence from animal studies, see also Carrasco & Pallas, 2006;Royal et al, 2010;Wallace et al, 2004), and the frontal eye fields (Garg, Schwartz, & Stevens, 2007).…”

Section: Auditory Tactile and Audiotactile Attentionsupporting

confidence: 71%

Auditory, tactile, and audiotactile information processing following visual deprivation.

Occelli¹,

Spence²,

Zampini³

2013

Psychological Bulletin

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We highlight the results of those studies that have investigated the plastic reorganization processes that occur within the human brain as a consequence of visual deprivation, as well as how these processes give rise to behaviorally observable changes in the perceptual processing of auditory and tactile information. We review the evidence showing that visual deprivation affects the establishment of the spatial coordinate systems involved in the processing of auditory and tactile inputs within the peripersonal space around an individual. In blind individuals, the absence of a conjoint activation of external coordinate systems across modalities co-occurs with a higher capacity to direct auditory and tactile attentional resources to different spatial locations and to ignore irrelevant distractors. Both processes could thus contribute to the reduced spatial multisensory binding that has been observed in those who are blind. The interplay between auditory and tactile information in visually deprived individuals is modulated by attentional factors. Blind individuals typically outperform sighted people in those tasks where the target is presented in one sensory modality (and the other modality acts as a distractor). By contrast, they are less efficient in tasks explicitly requiring the combination of information across sensory modalities. The review highlights how these behavioral effects are subserved by extensive plastic changes at the neural level, with brain areas traditionally involved in visual functioning switching and being recruited for the processing of stimuli within the intact residual senses. We also discuss the roles played by other intervening factors with regard to compensatory mechanisms, such as previous visual experience, age at onset of blindness, and learning effects.

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“…Several studies have reported that the occipital cortex of CB responds quite indifferently to a variety of cognitive tasks, suggesting that some common factors (i.e., attentional) rather than specific cognitive processes may contribute to the unselective occipital activity observed in this population (5)(6)(7)(8). In contrast, other studies do suggest that distinct regions of the visually deprived occipital cortex may show functional specialization that is to some extent comparable to what is known in SI (9).…”

mentioning

confidence: 88%

Functional specialization for auditory–spatial processing in the occipital cortex of congenitally blind humans

Collignon

Vandewalle

Voss

et al. 2011

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

295

243

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The study of the congenitally blind (CB) represents a unique opportunity to explore experience-dependant plasticity in a sensory region deprived of its natural inputs since birth. Although several studies have shown occipital regions of CB to be involved in nonvisual processing, whether the functional organization of the visual cortex observed in sighted individuals (SI) is maintained in the rewired occipital regions of the blind has only been recently investigated. In the present functional MRI study, we compared the brain activity of CB and SI processing either the spatial or the pitch properties of sounds carrying information in both domains (i.e., the same sounds were used in both tasks), using an adaptive procedure specifically designed to adjust for performance level. In addition to showing a substantial recruitment of the occipital cortex for sound processing in CB, we also demonstrate that auditory-spatial processing mainly recruits the right cuneus and the right middle occipital gyrus, two regions of the dorsal occipital stream known to be involved in visuospatial/motion processing in SI. Moreover, functional connectivity analyses revealed that these reorganized occipital regions are part of an extensive brain network including regions known to underlie audiovisual spatial abilities (i.e., intraparietal sulcus, superior frontal gyrus). We conclude that some regions of the right dorsal occipital stream do not require visual experience to develop a specialization for the processing of spatial information and to be functionally integrated in a preexisting brain network dedicated to this ability.blindness | cross-modal plasticity | ventral-dorsal auditory streams | modularity W hen the brain is deprived of its natural sensory inputs, it can rewire itself, showing an impressive range of plastic changes (1). Early visual deprivation thus provides an exceptional model to explore the role of sensory experience in shaping the functional architecture of the brain. Based on a number of studies comparing brain activity of congenitally blind (CB) and sighted individuals (SI), the current prevailing view is that visual deafferentation results in a reliable recruitment of the occipital cortex for nonvisual sensory processing to compensate for the challenging condition that is visual deprivation (2).Although such findings highlight the brain's remarkable ability to rewire its components, questions remain about the functional organization of the occipital cortex in CB. An important characteristic of the visual cortex in SI is domain specialization wherein specific functional activity has been found in anatomically identifiable regions (3, 4). Our main question was, therefore: does the occipital cortex of CB process the colonizing nonvisual stimuli in a global manner or does it do so using some functional modularity similar to what is observed in SI, with precise regions involved in specific cognitive functions?Several studies have reported that the occipital cortex of CB responds quite indifferently to a variety of cogn...

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Working memory for vibrotactile frequencies: Comparison of cortical activity in blind and sighted individuals

Cited by 37 publications

References 98 publications

Language processing in the occipital cortex of congenitally blind adults

Language processing in the occipital cortex of congenitally blind adults

Auditory, tactile, and audiotactile information processing following visual deprivation.

Functional specialization for auditory–spatial processing in the occipital cortex of congenitally blind humans

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