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Journal of Neuroscience, Vol 13, 4538-4548, Copyright © 1993 by Society for Neuroscience
Auditory compensation for early blindness in cat cerebral cortex
JP Rauschecker and M Korte
Laboratory of Neurophysiology, National Institute of Mental Health, Poolesville, Maryland 20837.
Single-neuron activity was recorded in the caudal part of the anterior
ectosylvian (AE) cortex of cats that had been deprived of vision for
several years by means of binocular lid suture shortly after birth and in
normal control animals. Over 300 neurons were tested in each group with
auditory, visual, and somatosensory stimuli. We confirmed the existence of
an anterior ectosylvian visual area (AEV) in the fundus and ventral bank of
the AE sulcus. Neurons in AEV had purely visual responses in normal cats.
In visually deprived cats, by contrast, only a minority of cells in this
area still responded to visual stimulation. Instead, most cells reacted
vigorously to auditory and, to some extent, somatosensory stimuli. The few
remaining visual neurons were also driven by auditory or somatosensory
stimuli. No increase in the number of unresponsive neurons was found. It
appears, therefore, that a cortical region that normally represents visual
activity can become driven by auditory or somatosensory activity as a
result of visual deprivation. Our results imply that early blindness causes
compensatory increases in the amount of auditory cortical representation,
possibly by an expansion of nonvisual areas into previously visual
territory. In particular, they provide evidence for the existence of neural
mechanisms for intermodal compensatory plasticity in the cerebral cortex of
young animals. The changes described here may also provide the neural basis
for a behavioral compensation for early blindness described elsewhere.
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