‘Visual’ cortices of congenitally blind adults are sensitive to response selection demands in a go/no-go task

Sensory Modality and Spoken Language Shape Reading Network in Blind Readers of Braille

“…We further found that, in whole-cortex results, a portion of V1 (foveal aspect of left V1) responded more to Braille reading than auditory word comprehension, whereas other portions of V1 (right hemisphere, and peripheral) did not show such a preference. This evidence is consistent with prior work suggesting that V1 does not have a single, homogeneous function in people who are blind but rather contains multiple anatomically separable functional subdivisions (Amedi et al, 2003;Bedny et al, 2011;Burton, Diamond, & McDermott, 2003;Kanjlia et al, 2021;Kanjlia, Pant, & Bedny, 2019;Lane et al, 2015;Noppeney et al, 2003). Likewise, V1 may contain anatomically separable Braille-specific and high-level language responses in blind readers of Braille.…”

“…Individual-subject functional ROIs were defined within each of the above search spaces using a leave-one-run-out cross- validation procedure (e.g., Ellis et al, 2021; Kim et al, 2017; Saygin et al, 2016). This procedure ensures that independent sets of data are used to define ROIs and to test hypotheses and effectively uses each run as a ‘localizer scan’ for the other runs of data (Cohen et al, 2019; Ellis et al, 2021; Kanjlia et al, 2016, 2021; Ratan Murty et al, 2020; Saygin et al, 2016). ROIs were defined based on data from all but one run, then the percent signal change (PSC) was extracted from the left-out run.…”

“…This suggests that vOTC may not make a unique contribution to Braille reading in the same way that it does to visual reading. Moreover, visual cortices of people who are born blind, including vOTC and early visual areas (V1-V3), are recruited for non-visual functions apart from Braille (e.g., Amedi, Raz, Pianka, Malach, & Zohary, 2003;Büchel et al, 1998b;Gougoux, Zatorre, Lassonde, Voss, & Lepore, 2005;Kanjlia, Loiotile, Harhen, & Bedny, 2021;Kujala, Alho, Paavilainen, Summala, & Naatanen, 1992;Sathian, 2005). Particularly relevant for the neural basis of Braille, large swaths of blind 'visual' cortex, including portions of V1, participate in processing spoken language, including high-level semantic and grammatical information (Bedny, Pascual-Leone, Dodell-Feder, Fedorenko, & Saxe, 2011;Bedny, Richardson, & Saxe, 2015;Noppeney, Friston, & Price, 2003;Röder, Stock, Bien, Neville, & Rösler, 2002;Watkins et al, 2012).…”

Retinotopic organization of feedback projections in primate early visual cortex: implications for active vision

“…In recent years advances in signal analysis have led to a revision of the notion of unimodal primary areas suggesting that the neocortex might essentially be multisensory in function (Cappe and Barone, 2005; Fu et al, 2003; Gau et al, 2020; Ghazanfar and Schroeder, 2006; Hasson et al, 2016; Henschke et al, 2015; Liang et al, 2013; Macaluso and Driver, 2005; Murray et al, 2016). The major focus on the projection of non-visual areas to early visual cortex in the primate brain has been on those originating from auditory cortex which in addition to multisensory integration and their impact on perception (Bedny, 2017; Deen et al, 2015; Kanjlia et al, 2021; Kupers and Ptito, 2014; van Wassenhove et al, 2005), have been implicated in cortical plasticity and cross modal reorganization (Gau et al, 2020; Vetter et al, 2020) and as a model system for investigating predictive processing in the cortex (Beierholm et al, 2020; Gau et al, 2020; Rohe et al, 2019; Rohe and Noppeney, 2015; Vetter et al, 2020).…”

“…There is extensive literature showing that in the congenitally blind the “visual” cortex is activated by linguistic stimuli and shows enhanced functional connectivity with language response frontal regions (Amedi et al, 2003; Bedny et al, 2011). More recently, a resting state and task fMRI investigation exploiting a go/no-go paradigm revealed interactions of visual cortex with frontal executive function networks (Kanjlia et al, 2021). The authors of the study argue that the influence of the prefrontal cortex is not the consequence of large-scale anatomical changes in blindness, but rather the efficacy of known connectivity patterns between fronto-parietal cortex and the visual system.…”