Early blindness shapes cortical representations of auditory frequency within auditory cortex

Abstract

Early loss of vision is classically linked to large-scale cross-modal plasticity within occipital cortex. Much less is known about the effects of early blindness on auditory cortex. Here, we examine the effects of early blindness on the cortical representation of auditory frequency within human primary and secondary auditory areas using fMRI. We observe that 4 individuals with early blindness (2 females), and a group of 5 individuals with anophthalmia (1 female), a condition in which both eyes fail to develop, have lower response amplitudes and narrower voxelwise tuning bandwidths compared with a group of typically sighted individuals. These results provide some of the first evidence in human participants for compensatory plasticity within nondeprived sensory areas as a result of sensory loss.