Increased BOLD Variability in the Parietal Cortex and Enhanced Parieto-Occipital Connectivity during Tactile Perception in Congenitally Blind Individuals
Previous studies in early blind individuals posited a possible role of parieto-occipital connections in conveying nonvisual information to the visual occipital cortex. As a consequence of blindness, parietal areas would thus become able to integrate a greater amount of multimodal information than in...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Wiley
2012-01-01
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| Series: | Neural Plasticity |
| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2012/720278 |
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| author | Andrea Leo Giulio Bernardi Giacomo Handjaras Daniela Bonino Emiliano Ricciardi Pietro Pietrini |
| author_facet | Andrea Leo Giulio Bernardi Giacomo Handjaras Daniela Bonino Emiliano Ricciardi Pietro Pietrini |
| author_sort | Andrea Leo |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Previous studies in early blind individuals posited a possible role of parieto-occipital connections in conveying nonvisual information to the visual occipital cortex. As a consequence of blindness, parietal areas would thus become able to integrate a greater amount of multimodal information than in sighted individuals. To verify this hypothesis, we compared fMRI-measured BOLD signal temporal variability, an index of efficiency in functional information integration, in congenitally blind and sighted individuals during tactile spatial discrimination and motion perception tasks. In both tasks, the BOLD variability analysis revealed many cortical regions with a significantly greater variability in the blind as compared to sighted individuals, with an overlapping cluster located in the left inferior parietal/anterior intraparietal cortex. A functional connectivity analysis using this region as seed showed stronger correlations in both tasks with occipital areas in the blind as compared to sighted individuals. As BOLD variability reflects neural integration and processing efficiency, these cross-modal plastic changes in the parietal cortex, even if described in a limited sample, reinforce the hypothesis that this region may play an important role in processing nonvisual information in blind subjects and act as a hub in the cortico-cortical pathway from somatosensory cortex to the reorganized occipital areas. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-e5223e078a0e445b94c349522cc4403d |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 2090-5904 1687-5443 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2012-01-01 |
| publisher | Wiley |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Neural Plasticity |
| spelling | doaj-art-e5223e078a0e445b94c349522cc4403d2025-02-03T01:01:39ZengWileyNeural Plasticity2090-59041687-54432012-01-01201210.1155/2012/720278720278Increased BOLD Variability in the Parietal Cortex and Enhanced Parieto-Occipital Connectivity during Tactile Perception in Congenitally Blind IndividualsAndrea Leo0Giulio Bernardi1Giacomo Handjaras2Daniela Bonino3Emiliano Ricciardi4Pietro Pietrini5Laboratory of Clinical Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Pisa, 56127 Pisa, ItalyLaboratory of Clinical Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Pisa, 56127 Pisa, ItalyLaboratory of Clinical Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Pisa, 56127 Pisa, ItalyLaboratory of Clinical Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Pisa, 56127 Pisa, ItalyLaboratory of Clinical Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Pisa, 56127 Pisa, ItalyLaboratory of Clinical Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Pisa, 56127 Pisa, ItalyPrevious studies in early blind individuals posited a possible role of parieto-occipital connections in conveying nonvisual information to the visual occipital cortex. As a consequence of blindness, parietal areas would thus become able to integrate a greater amount of multimodal information than in sighted individuals. To verify this hypothesis, we compared fMRI-measured BOLD signal temporal variability, an index of efficiency in functional information integration, in congenitally blind and sighted individuals during tactile spatial discrimination and motion perception tasks. In both tasks, the BOLD variability analysis revealed many cortical regions with a significantly greater variability in the blind as compared to sighted individuals, with an overlapping cluster located in the left inferior parietal/anterior intraparietal cortex. A functional connectivity analysis using this region as seed showed stronger correlations in both tasks with occipital areas in the blind as compared to sighted individuals. As BOLD variability reflects neural integration and processing efficiency, these cross-modal plastic changes in the parietal cortex, even if described in a limited sample, reinforce the hypothesis that this region may play an important role in processing nonvisual information in blind subjects and act as a hub in the cortico-cortical pathway from somatosensory cortex to the reorganized occipital areas.http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2012/720278 |
| spellingShingle | Andrea Leo Giulio Bernardi Giacomo Handjaras Daniela Bonino Emiliano Ricciardi Pietro Pietrini Increased BOLD Variability in the Parietal Cortex and Enhanced Parieto-Occipital Connectivity during Tactile Perception in Congenitally Blind Individuals Neural Plasticity |
| title | Increased BOLD Variability in the Parietal Cortex and Enhanced Parieto-Occipital Connectivity during Tactile Perception in Congenitally Blind Individuals |
| title_full | Increased BOLD Variability in the Parietal Cortex and Enhanced Parieto-Occipital Connectivity during Tactile Perception in Congenitally Blind Individuals |
| title_fullStr | Increased BOLD Variability in the Parietal Cortex and Enhanced Parieto-Occipital Connectivity during Tactile Perception in Congenitally Blind Individuals |
| title_full_unstemmed | Increased BOLD Variability in the Parietal Cortex and Enhanced Parieto-Occipital Connectivity during Tactile Perception in Congenitally Blind Individuals |
| title_short | Increased BOLD Variability in the Parietal Cortex and Enhanced Parieto-Occipital Connectivity during Tactile Perception in Congenitally Blind Individuals |
| title_sort | increased bold variability in the parietal cortex and enhanced parieto occipital connectivity during tactile perception in congenitally blind individuals |
| url | http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2012/720278 |
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