Linked Life Data

21368198

Source:http://linkedlifedata.com/resource/pubmed/id/21368198

Statements in which the resource exists as a subject.
PredicateObject
rdf:type
lifeskim:mentions
pubmed:issue
11
pubmed:dateCreated
2011-3-16
pubmed:abstractText
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.
pubmed:grant
pubmed:language
eng
pubmed:journal
pubmed:citationSubset
IM
pubmed:status
MEDLINE
pubmed:month
Mar
pubmed:issn
1091-6490
pubmed:author
pubmed:issnType
Electronic
pubmed:day
15
pubmed:volume
108
pubmed:owner
NLM
pubmed:authorsComplete
Y
pubmed:pagination
4435-40
pubmed:dateRevised
2011-9-16
pubmed:meshHeading
pubmed:year
2011
pubmed:articleTitle
Functional specialization for auditory-spatial processing in the occipital cortex of congenitally blind humans.
pubmed:affiliation
Centre de Recherche en Neuropsychologie et Cognition, Université de Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada H3C 3J7. olivier.collignon@umontreal.ca
pubmed:publicationType
Journal Article, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't