Categorical representation from sound and sight in the ventral occipito-temporal cortex of sighted and blind

eLife

Karen E Cuculiza Mendoza¹  Roberto Bottini¹  Nikolaas N Oosterhof¹  Stefania Mattioni²  Olivier Collignon²  Ceren Battal³  Mohamed Rezk³ 

[1] Centre for Mind/Brain Sciences, University of Trento, Trento, Italy;Institute of research in Psychology (IPSY) & Institute of Neuroscience (IoNS) - University of Louvain (UCLouvain), Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium;Institute of research in Psychology (IPSY) & Institute of Neuroscience (IoNS) - University of Louvain (UCLouvain), Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium;Centre for Mind/Brain Sciences, University of Trento, Trento, Italy;

关键词: blindness;    category perception;    crossmodal plasticity;    fMRI-multivariate analyses;    auditory;    visual;    Human;   

DOI  :  10.7554/eLife.50732

来源: publisher

【 摘 要 】

Is vision necessary for the development of the categorical organization of the Ventral Occipito-Temporal Cortex (VOTC)? We used fMRI to characterize VOTC responses to eight categories presented acoustically in sighted and early blind individuals, and visually in a separate sighted group. We observed that VOTC reliably encodes sound categories in sighted and blind people using a representational structure and connectivity partially similar to the one found in vision. Sound categories were, however, more reliably encoded in the blind than the sighted group, using a representational format closer to the one found in vision. Crucially, VOTC in blind represents the categorical membership of sounds rather than their acoustic features. Our results suggest that sounds trigger categorical responses in the VOTC of congenitally blind and sighted people that partially match the topography and functional profile of the visual response, despite qualitative nuances in the categorical organization of VOTC between modalities and groups.

【 授权许可】

CC BY