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Brain Plasticity in Blind Subjects Centralizes Beyond the Modal Cortices

It is well established that the human brain reorganizes following sensory deprivations. In blind individuals, visual processing regions including the lateral occipital cortex (LOC) are activated by auditory and tactile stimuli as demonstrated by neurophysiological and neuroimaging investigations. Th...

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Autores principales: Ortiz-Terán, Laura, Ortiz, Tomás, Perez, David L., Aragón, Jose Ignacio, Diez, Ibai, Pascual-Leone, Alvaro, Sepulcre, Jorge
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4937754/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27458350
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnsys.2016.00061
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author Ortiz-Terán, Laura
Ortiz, Tomás
Perez, David L.
Aragón, Jose Ignacio
Diez, Ibai
Pascual-Leone, Alvaro
Sepulcre, Jorge
author_facet Ortiz-Terán, Laura
Ortiz, Tomás
Perez, David L.
Aragón, Jose Ignacio
Diez, Ibai
Pascual-Leone, Alvaro
Sepulcre, Jorge
author_sort Ortiz-Terán, Laura
collection PubMed
description It is well established that the human brain reorganizes following sensory deprivations. In blind individuals, visual processing regions including the lateral occipital cortex (LOC) are activated by auditory and tactile stimuli as demonstrated by neurophysiological and neuroimaging investigations. The mechanisms for such plasticity remain unclear, but shifts in connectivity across existing neural networks appear to play a critical role. The majority of research efforts to date have focused on neuroplastic changes within visual unimodal regions, however we hypothesized that neuroplastic alterations may also occur in brain networks beyond the visual cortices including involvement of multimodal integration regions and heteromodal cortices. In this study, two recently developed graph-theory based functional connectivity analyses, interconnector analyses and local and distant connectivity, were applied to investigate functional reorganization in regional and distributed neural-systems in late-onset blind (LB) and congenitally blind (CB) cohorts each compared to their own group of sighted controls. While functional network alterations as measured by the degree of differential links (DDL) occurred in sensory cortices, neuroplastic changes were most prominent within multimodal and association cortices. Subjects with LB showed enhanced multimodal integration connections in the parieto-opercular, temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and ventral premotor (vPM) regions, while CB individuals exhibited increased superior parietal cortex (SPC) connections. This study reveals the critical role of recipient multi-sensory integration areas in network reorganization and cross-modal plasticity in blind individuals. These findings suggest that aspects of cross-modal neuroplasticity and adaptive sensory-motor and auditory functions may potentially occur through reorganization in multimodal integration regions.
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spelling pubmed-49377542016-07-25 Brain Plasticity in Blind Subjects Centralizes Beyond the Modal Cortices Ortiz-Terán, Laura Ortiz, Tomás Perez, David L. Aragón, Jose Ignacio Diez, Ibai Pascual-Leone, Alvaro Sepulcre, Jorge Front Syst Neurosci Neuroscience It is well established that the human brain reorganizes following sensory deprivations. In blind individuals, visual processing regions including the lateral occipital cortex (LOC) are activated by auditory and tactile stimuli as demonstrated by neurophysiological and neuroimaging investigations. The mechanisms for such plasticity remain unclear, but shifts in connectivity across existing neural networks appear to play a critical role. The majority of research efforts to date have focused on neuroplastic changes within visual unimodal regions, however we hypothesized that neuroplastic alterations may also occur in brain networks beyond the visual cortices including involvement of multimodal integration regions and heteromodal cortices. In this study, two recently developed graph-theory based functional connectivity analyses, interconnector analyses and local and distant connectivity, were applied to investigate functional reorganization in regional and distributed neural-systems in late-onset blind (LB) and congenitally blind (CB) cohorts each compared to their own group of sighted controls. While functional network alterations as measured by the degree of differential links (DDL) occurred in sensory cortices, neuroplastic changes were most prominent within multimodal and association cortices. Subjects with LB showed enhanced multimodal integration connections in the parieto-opercular, temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and ventral premotor (vPM) regions, while CB individuals exhibited increased superior parietal cortex (SPC) connections. This study reveals the critical role of recipient multi-sensory integration areas in network reorganization and cross-modal plasticity in blind individuals. These findings suggest that aspects of cross-modal neuroplasticity and adaptive sensory-motor and auditory functions may potentially occur through reorganization in multimodal integration regions. Frontiers Media S.A. 2016-07-08 /pmc/articles/PMC4937754/ /pubmed/27458350 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnsys.2016.00061 Text en Copyright © 2016 Ortiz-Terán, Ortiz, Perez, Aragón, Diez, Pascual-Leone and Sepulcre. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution and reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Ortiz-Terán, Laura
Ortiz, Tomás
Perez, David L.
Aragón, Jose Ignacio
Diez, Ibai
Pascual-Leone, Alvaro
Sepulcre, Jorge
Brain Plasticity in Blind Subjects Centralizes Beyond the Modal Cortices
title Brain Plasticity in Blind Subjects Centralizes Beyond the Modal Cortices
title_full Brain Plasticity in Blind Subjects Centralizes Beyond the Modal Cortices
title_fullStr Brain Plasticity in Blind Subjects Centralizes Beyond the Modal Cortices
title_full_unstemmed Brain Plasticity in Blind Subjects Centralizes Beyond the Modal Cortices
title_short Brain Plasticity in Blind Subjects Centralizes Beyond the Modal Cortices
title_sort brain plasticity in blind subjects centralizes beyond the modal cortices
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4937754/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27458350
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnsys.2016.00061
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