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- Title
How Visual Is the Visual Cortex? Comparing Connectional and Functional Fingerprints between Congenitally Blind and Sighted Individuals.
- Authors
Xiaoying Wang; Peelen, Marius V.; Zaizhu Han; Chenxi He; Caramazza, Alfonso; Yanchao Bi
- Abstract
Classical animal visual deprivation studies and human neuroimaging studies have shown that visual experience plays a critical role in shaping the functionality and connectivity of the visual cortex. Interestingly, recent studies have additionally reported circumscribed regions in the visual cortex in which functional selectivity was remarkably similar in individuals with and without visual experience. Here, by directly comparing resting-state and task-based fMRI data in congenitally blind and sighted human subjects, we obtained large-scale continuous maps of the degree to which connectional and functional "fingerprints" of ventral visual cortex depend on visual experience. We found a close agreement between connectional and functional maps, pointing to a strong interdependence of connectivity and function. Visual experience (or the absence thereof) had a pronounced effect on the resting-state connectivity and functional response profile of occipital cortex and the posterior lateral fusiform gyrus. By contrast, connectional and functional fingerprints in the anterior medial and posterior lateral parts of the ventral visual cortex were statistically indistinguishable between blind and sighted individuals. These results provide a large-scale mapping of the influence of visual experience on the development of both functional and connectivity properties of visual cortex, which serves as a basis for the formulation of new hypotheses regarding the functionality and plasticity of specific subregions.
- Subjects
VISUAL cortex physiology; NEURAL circuitry; VISUAL perception; BLINDNESS; FUNCTIONAL magnetic resonance imaging; TEMPORAL lobe; NEUROPLASTICITY; FEIGNED blindness; PHYSIOLOGY
- Publication
Journal of Neuroscience, 2015, Vol 35, Issue 36, p12545
- ISSN
0270-6474
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3914-14.2015