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The Journal of Neuroscience, August 5, 2009, 29(31):9719-9724; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0274-09.2009

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Brief Communications
Do We Really Need Vision? How Blind People "See" the Actions of Others

Emiliano Ricciardi,^1,2 Daniela Bonino,^1,5 Lorenzo Sani,¹ Tomaso Vecchi,⁵ Mario Guazzelli,³ James V. Haxby,⁶ Luciano Fadiga,^7,8 * and Pietro Pietrini^1,4 *

¹Laboratory of Clinical Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Pisa, ²MRI Laboratory, Fondazione "G. Monasterio" Regione Toscana/Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, ³Clinical Psychology Unit, University of Pisa, and ⁴Department of Laboratory Medicine and Molecular Diagnostics, Pisa University Hospital, 56126 Pisa, Italy, ⁵Psychology Department, University of Pavia, 27100 Pavia, Italy, ⁶Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire 03755, ⁷Department of Biomedical Sciences and Advanced Therapy, University of Ferrara, 44100 Ferrara, Italy, and ⁸Italian Institute of Technology, 16163 Genova, Italy

Correspondence should be addressed to Emiliano Ricciardi, Laboratory of Clinical Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Pisa, via San Zeno, 61 56126 Pisa, Italy. Email: emiliano.ricciardi{at}bioclinica.unipi.it

Observing and learning actions and behaviors from others, a mechanism crucial for survival and social interaction, engages the mirror neuron system. To determine whether vision is a necessary prerequisite for the human mirror system to develop and function, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to compare brain activity in congenitally blind individuals during the auditory presentation of hand-executed actions or environmental sounds, and the motor pantomime of manipulation tasks, with that in sighted volunteers, who additionally performed a visual action recognition task. Congenitally blind individuals activated a premotor–temporoparietal cortical network in response to aurally presented actions that overlapped both with mirror system areas found in sighted subjects in response to visually and aurally presented stimuli, and with the brain response elicited by motor pantomime of the same actions. Furthermore, the mirror system cortex showed a significantly greater response to motor familiar than to unfamiliar action sounds in both sighted and blind individuals. Thus, the mirror system in humans can develop in the absence of sight. The results in blind individuals demonstrate that the sound of an action engages the mirror system for action schemas that have not been learned through the visual modality and that this activity is not mediated by visual imagery. These findings indicate that the mirror system is based on supramodal sensory representations of actions and, furthermore, that these abstract representations allow individuals with no visual experience to interact effectively with others.

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Received Dec. 9, 2008; revised June 4, 2009; accepted June 13, 2009.

Correspondence should be addressed to Emiliano Ricciardi, Laboratory of Clinical Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Pisa, via San Zeno, 61 56126 Pisa, Italy. Email: emiliano.ricciardi{at}bioclinica.unipi.it

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