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The Journal of Neuroscience, May 14, 2008, 28(20):5141-5148; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0803-08.2008

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Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Visual Motion Area MT+/V5 Responds to Auditory Motion in Human Sight-Recovery Subjects

Melissa Saenz,1 Lindsay B. Lewis,2 Alexander G. Huth,1 Ione Fine,3 and Christof Koch1

1Computation and Neural Systems, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, 2Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, and 3Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Melissa Saenz at the above address. Email: saenz{at}caltech.edu

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we found that cortical visual motion area MT+/V5 responded to auditory motion in two rare subjects who had been blind since early childhood and whose vision was partially recovered in adulthood. Visually normal control subjects did not show similar auditory responses. These auditory responses in MT+ were specific to motion compared with other complex auditory stimuli including frequency sweeps and speech. Thus, MT+ developed motion-specific responses to nonvisual input, suggesting that cross-modal plasticity can be influenced by the normal functional specialization of a cortical region. Regarding sight recovery after early blindness, our results further demonstrate that cross-modal responses coexist with regained visual responses within the visual cortex.

Key words: multisensory; plasticity; blindness; motion; human; MT; V5

Received Nov. 27, 2007; revised March 25, 2008; accepted March 26, 2008.

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Melissa Saenz at the above address. Email: saenz{at}caltech.edu


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