Occipito-parietal cortex activation during visuo-spatial imagery in early blind humans

Vanlierde, Annick; Volder, Anne De; Wanet-Defalque, Marie-Chantal; Veraart, Claude

doi:10.1016/s1053-8119(03)00153-8

Cited by 89 publications

(72 citation statements)

References 70 publications

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“…This is in agreement with previous neuroimaging studies showing an activation of this region during auditory spatial tasks in EB (Arno et al 2001;De Volder et al 1999;Leclerc et al 2000;Poirier et al 2006;Vanlierde et al 2003;Weeks et al 2000). The present TMS results thus provide further evidence that the right dorsal extrastriate occipital cortex is part of the brain network responsible for auditory spatial processing in EB (Collignon et al 2007;Collignon et al 2008b).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Reorganisation of the Right Occipito-Parietal Stream for Auditory Spatial Processing in Early Blind Humans. A Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Study

et al. 2009

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It is well known that, following an early visual deprivation, the neural network involved in processing auditory spatial information undergoes a profound reorganization. In particular, several studies have demonstrated an extensive activation of occipital brain areas, usually regarded as essentially "visual", when early blind subjects (EB) performed a task that requires spatial processing of sounds. However, little is known about the possible consequences of the activation of occipitals area on the function of the large cortical network known, in sighted subjects, to be involved in the processing of auditory spatial information. To address this issue, we used event-related transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to induce virtual lesions of either the right intra-parietal sulcus (rIPS) or the right dorsal extrastriate occipital cortex (rOC) at different delays in EB subjects performing a sound lateralization task. Surprisingly, TMS applied over rIPS, a region critically involved in the spatial processing of sound in sighted subjects, had no influence on the task performance in EB. In contrast, TMS applied over rOC 50 ms after sound onset, disrupted the spatial processing of sounds originating from the contralateral hemifield. The present study shed new lights on the reorganisation of the cortical network dedicated to the spatial processing of sounds in EB by showing an early contribution of rOC and a lesser involvement of rIPS.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Reorganisation of the Right Occipito-Parietal Stream for Auditory Spatial Processing in Early Blind Humans. A Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Study

et al. 2009

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“…Interestingly, these cortical regions are activated during both perceptual and imagery tasks, regardless of the sensory modality through which such a spatial information has been acquired Ptito et al, 2011;Ricciardi et al, 2014aRicciardi et al, , 2014bRicciardi et al, , 2010Ricciardi and Pietrini, 2011). Furthermore, congenitally blind individuals recruit intraparietal and superior parietal regions during non-visual spatial processing and localization (Weeks et al, 2000), spatial imagery (Vanlierde et al, 2003), orientation discrimination (Ptito, 2005), spatial attention and memory , and even numerical comparison (Szucs and Csepe, 2005) tasks. Altogether, these observations strongly suggest a more abstract, visual-independent sensory representation of spatial information in the human brain, that is, a supramodal functional organization.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…At a neural level, brain responses across distinct perceptual tasks in sighted and congenitally blind individuals show both similar patterns of activation within wide portions of association cortical areas (Ricciardi et al, 2014a) and a differential recruitment of primary visual cortical areas (Vanlierde et al, 2003), due to cross-modal plastic functional rearrangements in vision-related cortical areas (Kupers et al, 2011a;Ricciardi and Pietrini, 2011). Overall, these findings indicate that in the brain supramodal and cross-modal functional organizations coexist.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial imagery relies on a sensory independent, though sensory sensitive, functional organization within the parietal cortex: A fMRI study of angle discrimination in sighted and congenitally blind individuals

et al. 2015

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“…Although extensive cross-modal plasticity has been found outside the occipital cortex, within parietal Ricciardi et al 2006;Sadato et al 1998;Vanlierde et al 2003), temporal Noppeney et al 2003), and frontal cortices (Noppeney et al 2003;Sadato et al 1998), it seems likely that much of the plasticity within these multimodal or auditory/ language areas is driven by the cognitive demands of being blind, such as increased reliance on auditory and tactile information and increased memory demands, rather than the loss of visual input per se.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mechanisms of Cross-Modal Plasticity in Early-Blind Subjects

Lewis

Sàenz

Fine

2010

Journal of Neurophysiology

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Lewis LB, Saenz M, Fine I. Mechanisms of cross-modal plasticity in early-blind subjects. J Neurophysiol 104: 2995-3008, 2010. First published July 28, 2010 doi:10.1152/jn.00983.2009. A variety of studies have demonstrated enhanced blood oxygenation level dependent responses to auditory and tactile stimuli within occipital cortex as a result of early blindness. However, little is known about the organizational principles that drive this cross-modal plasticity. We compared BOLD responses to a wide variety of auditory and tactile tasks (vs. rest) in early-blind and sighted subjects. As expected, cross-modal responses were larger in blind than in sighted subjects in occipital cortex for all tasks (cross-modal plasticity). Within both blind and sighted subject groups, we found patterns of cross-modal activity that were remarkably similar across tasks: a large proportion of cross-modal responses within occipital cortex are neither task nor stimulus specific. We next examined the mechanisms underlying enhanced BOLD responses within early-blind subjects. We found that the enhancement of cross-modal responses due to early blindness was best described as an additive shift, suggesting that cross-modal plasticity within blind subjects does not originate from either a scaling or unmasking of cross-modal responsivities found in sighted subjects.

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Occipito-parietal cortex activation during visuo-spatial imagery in early blind humans

Cited by 89 publications

References 70 publications

Reorganisation of the Right Occipito-Parietal Stream for Auditory Spatial Processing in Early Blind Humans. A Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Study

Reorganisation of the Right Occipito-Parietal Stream for Auditory Spatial Processing in Early Blind Humans. A Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Study

Spatial imagery relies on a sensory independent, though sensory sensitive, functional organization within the parietal cortex: A fMRI study of angle discrimination in sighted and congenitally blind individuals

Mechanisms of Cross-Modal Plasticity in Early-Blind Subjects

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