PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Rita Loiotile
AU  - Rhodri Cusack
AU  - Marina Bedny
TI  - Naturalistic auditory stories synchronize “visual” cortices across congenitally blind but not sighted individuals
AID  - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0298-19.2019
DP  - 2019 Sep 23
TA  - The Journal of Neuroscience
PG  - 0298-19
4099  - http://www.jneurosci.org/content/early/2019/09/23/JNEUROSCI.0298-19.2019.short
4100  - http://www.jneurosci.org/content/early/2019/09/23/JNEUROSCI.0298-19.2019.full
AB  - How does developmental experience, as opposed to intrinsic physiology, shape cortical function? Naturalistic stimuli were used to elicit neural synchrony in individuals blind from birth (n=18) and those who grew up with sight (n=18). Blind and blindfolded sighted participants passively listened to three audio-movie clips, an auditory narrative, a sentence shuffled version of the narrative (maintaining language but lacking a plotline), and a version of the narrative backwards (lacking both language and plot). For both groups, early auditory cortices were synchronized to a similar degree across stimulus types, while higher-cognitive temporo-parietal and prefrontal areas were more synchronized by meaningful, temporally extended stimuli (i.e., audio-movies and narrative). “Visual” cortices were more synchronized across blind than sighted individuals, but only for audio-movies and narrative. In the blind group, “visual” cortex synchrony was low for backwards speech and intermediate for sentence shuffle. Meaningful auditory stimuli synchronize “visual” cortices of people born blind.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTNaturalistic stimuli engage cognitive processing at many levels. Here, we harnessed this richness to investigate the effect of experience on cortical function. We find that listening to naturalistic audio-movies and narrative drives synchronized activity across “visual” cortices of blind, more so than sighted, individuals. “Visual” cortex synchronization varies with meaningfulness and cognitive complexity. Higher synchrony is observed for temporally extended meaningful stimuli (e.g. movies/narrative), intermediate for shuffled sentences, lowest for time varying complex noise. By contrast, auditory cortex was synchronized equally by meaningful and meaningless stimuli. In congenitally blind individuals most of “visual” cortex is engaged by meaningful naturalistic stimuli.