“…However, the study of deafness and blindness suggests that this preference might be at least partially driven by environmental sensory experience, given that reorganisation for cognitive processing has been observed in sensory areas of deaf and blind individuals (Amedi et al, 2003, 2004; Bedny et al, 2011; Buchsbaum et al, 2005; Cardin et al, 2018; Ding et al, 2015). For example, previous studies have shown recruitment for visual working memory in the posterior superior temporal cortex (pSTC) of deaf individuals (Andin et al, 2021; Buchsbaum et al, 2005; Cardin et al, 2018; Ding et al, 2015), suggesting a change in function in this area from auditory to cognitive processing as a consequence of deafness. While crossmodal plasticity usually refers to the adaptation of sensory brain regions to processing information from a different sensory modality (Cardin et al, 2020a; Cardin et al, 2020b; Frasnelli et al, 2011; Heimler et al, 2015; Kral, 2007; Merabet & Pascual-Leone, 2010; Ricciardi et al, 2020), these working memory responses in pSTC seem to suggest that in the absence of early sensory stimulation, a sensory region can change its function as well as the sensory modality to which it responds (Bedny, 2017; Cardin et al, 2020b).…”