Evidence from blindness for a cognitively pluripotent cortex

M Bedny - Trends in cognitive sciences, 2017 - cell.com
Cognitive neuroscience seeks to discover how cognitive functions are implemented in
neural circuits. Studies of plasticity in blindness suggest that this mind–brain mapping is …

Are critical periods reversible in the adult brain? Insights on cortical specializations based on sensory deprivation studies

B Heimler, A Amedi - Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 2020 - Elsevier
We review here studies with visual and auditory deprived/recovery populations to argue for
the need of a redefinition of the crucial role of unisensory-specific experiences during critical …

Crossmodal reorganisation in deafness: mechanisms for functional preservation and functional change

V Cardin, K Grin, V Vinogradova, B Manini - Neuroscience & Biobehavioral …, 2020 - Elsevier
The study of deafness and blindness has contributed unique knowledge to our
understanding of the brain, showing that environmental experience critically shapes neural …

Resting state functional connectivity in early blind humans

H Burton, AZ Snyder, ME Raichle - Frontiers in systems neuroscience, 2014 - frontiersin.org
Task-based neuroimaging studies in early blind humans (EB) have demonstrated
heightened visual cortex responses to non-visual paradigms. Several prior functional …

Reading braille by touch recruits posterior parietal cortex

YF Liu, B Rapp, M Bedny - Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 2023 - direct.mit.edu
Blind readers use a tactile reading system consisting of raised dot arrays: braille/⠃⠗⠇. How
do human brains implement reading by touch? The current study looked for signatures of …

Neuronal populations in the occipital cortex of the blind synchronize to the temporal dynamics of speech

MJ Van Ackeren, FM Barbero, S Mattioni, R Bottini… - elife, 2018 - elifesciences.org
The occipital cortex of early blind individuals (EB) activates during speech processing,
challenging the notion of a hard-wired neurobiology of language. But, at what stage of …

[HTML][HTML] A natural history of vision loss: Insight from evolution for human visual function

AA de Sousa, OS Todorov, MJ Proulx - Neuroscience & Biobehavioral …, 2022 - Elsevier
Research on the origin of vision and vision loss in naturally “blind” animal species can
reveal the tasks that vision fulfills and the brain's role in visual experience. Models that …

Distinctive interaction between cognitive networks and the visual cortex in early blind individuals

S Abboud, L Cohen - Cerebral Cortex, 2019 - academic.oup.com
In early blind individuals, brain activation by a variety of nonperceptual cognitive tasks
extends to the visual cortex, while in the sighted it is restricted to supramodal association …

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

R Tomasello, T Wennekers, M Garagnani… - Scientific reports, 2019 - nature.com
In blind people, the visual cortex takes on higher cognitive functions, including language.
Why this functional reorganisation mechanistically emerges at the neuronal circuit level is …

[HTML][HTML] The influence of visual deprivation on the development of the thalamocortical network: evidence from congenitally blind children and adults

J Lin, L Zhang, R Guo, S Jiao, X Song, S Feng, K Wang… - NeuroImage, 2022 - Elsevier
The thalamus is heavily involved in relaying sensory signals to the cerebral cortex. A
relevant issue is how the deprivation of congenital visual sensory information modulates the …