Peripheral sounds elicit stronger activity in contralateral occipital cortex in blind than sighted individuals.
Sci Rep
; 9(1): 11637, 2019 08 12.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-31406158
ABSTRACT
Previous research has shown that peripheral, task-irrelevant sounds elicit activity in contralateral visual cortex of sighted people, as revealed by a sustained positive deflection in the event-related potential (ERP) over the occipital scalp contralateral to the sound's location. This Auditory-evoked Contralateral Occipital Positivity (ACOP) appears between 200-450 ms after sound onset, and is present even when the task is entirely auditory and no visual stimuli are presented at all. Here, we investigate whether this cross-modal activation of contralateral visual cortex is influenced by visual experience. To this end, ERPs were recorded in 12 sighted and 12 blind subjects during a unimodal auditory task. Participants listened to a stream of sounds and pressed a button every time they heard a central target tone, while ignoring the peripheral noise bursts. It was found that task-irrelevant noise bursts elicited a larger ACOP in blind compared to sighted participants, indicating for the first time that peripheral sounds can enhance neural activity in visual cortex in a spatially lateralized manner even in visually deprived individuals. Overall, these results suggest that the cross-modal activation of contralateral visual cortex triggered by peripheral sounds does not require any visual input to develop, and is rather enhanced by visual deprivation.
Texto completo:
1
Colección:
01-internacional
Base de datos:
MEDLINE
Asunto principal:
Percepción Auditiva
/
Corteza Visual
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Percepción Visual
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Ceguera
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Personas con Daño Visual
Tipo de estudio:
Observational_studies
/
Risk_factors_studies
Límite:
Adult
/
Aged
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Female
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Humans
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Male
/
Middle aged
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Sci Rep
Año:
2019
Tipo del documento:
Article
País de afiliación:
Italia