Semantic representations in the visual cortex of blind and sighted humans

Αποθηκεύτηκε σε:
Λεπτομέρειες βιβλιογραφικής εγγραφής
Εκδόθηκε σε:bioRxiv (Jan 30, 2025)
Κύριος συγγραφέας: Paczyńska, Małgorzata
Άλλοι συγγραφείς: Urbaniak, Marta, Dębecka, Marta, Bola, Łukasz
Έκδοση:
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
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022 |a 2692-8205 
024 7 |a 10.1101/2025.01.28.635293  |2 doi 
035 |a 3161603155 
045 0 |b d20250130 
100 1 |a Paczyńska, Małgorzata 
245 1 |a Semantic representations in the visual cortex of blind and sighted humans 
260 |b Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press  |c Jan 30, 2025 
513 |a Working Paper 
520 3 |a In blind humans, the “visual” cortex responds to linguistic stimuli, such as words and sentences. This is sometimes taken as evidence that this brain region supports starkly different computations in blind and sighted individuals. Here, we challenge this view and show that, during word processing, the visual areas in these two populations represent the same semantic dimension – the knowledge about physical properties of word referents. Using analysis of fMRI activation patterns, we found that the visual cortex in both blind and sighted participants represented differences between individual words. In both groups, the activation patterns for words in the visual cortex reflected physical, but not conceptual similarity between word referents. Furthermore, the between-group correlations in these activation patterns were comparable to within-group correlations. Finally, during word processing, the visual areas in both groups showed greatest “representational connectivity” to the occipitotemporal areas. Overall, our findings suggest that responses to linguistic stimuli in the visual cortex of blind individuals are driven by representational mechanisms that are functional also in the sighted adult brain. In sighted individuals, information about physical properties of word referents might be backprojected to visual areas, from the occipitotemporal cortex, to support visual predictions, imagery, and visuospatial thinking. In blind individuals, this mechanism might be preserved and, combined with increased excitability of the blind visual cortex, drives strong responses of this region to linguistic stimuli.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest. 
653 |a Mental task performance 
653 |a Excitability 
653 |a Visual cortex 
653 |a Linguistics 
653 |a Information processing 
653 |a Functional magnetic resonance imaging 
653 |a Visual stimuli 
653 |a Word processing 
653 |a Physical properties 
653 |a Visual system 
653 |a Neural networks 
653 |a Semantics 
700 1 |a Urbaniak, Marta 
700 1 |a Dębecka, Marta 
700 1 |a Bola, Łukasz 
773 0 |t bioRxiv  |g (Jan 30, 2025) 
786 0 |d ProQuest  |t Biological Science Database 
856 4 1 |3 Citation/Abstract  |u https://www.proquest.com/docview/3161603155/abstract/embedded/6A8EOT78XXH2IG52?source=fedsrch 
856 4 0 |3 Full Text - PDF  |u https://www.proquest.com/docview/3161603155/fulltextPDF/embedded/6A8EOT78XXH2IG52?source=fedsrch 
856 4 0 |3 Full text outside of ProQuest  |u https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.28.635293v1