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Auditory, tactile, and audiotactile information processing following visual deprivation
Valeria Occelli1, Charles Spence, Massimiliano Zampini
1Department of Cognitive and Education Sciences, University of Trento, Rovereto, Italy. valeria.occelli@gmail.com
Psychological Bulletin
|May 23, 2012
Summary
Visual deprivation causes brain plasticity, altering how blind individuals process sound and touch. This leads to enhanced attention to specific sensory inputs but reduced integration across senses.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Sensory processing
- Brain plasticity
Background:
- Visual deprivation significantly impacts brain function.
- The brain exhibits remarkable plasticity, reorganizing neural pathways in response to sensory input changes.
- Understanding cross-modal plasticity is crucial for comprehending sensory compensation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review studies on brain plasticity following visual deprivation.
- To examine how these plastic changes affect auditory and tactile perception.
- To investigate the impact on spatial coordinate systems and attention.
Main Methods:
- Review of existing research on visual deprivation and sensory processing.
- Analysis of studies investigating neural and behavioral changes.
- Examination of factors influencing compensatory mechanisms.
Main Results:
- Visual deprivation alters spatial coordinate systems for auditory and tactile processing.
- Blind individuals show enhanced attentional control in specific sensory tasks.
- Reduced multisensory binding occurs in visually deprived individuals.
- Brain areas typically used for vision are recruited for other senses.
Conclusions:
- Extensive neural plasticity underlies behavioral changes in blind individuals.
- Attentional factors modulate the interplay between auditory and tactile information.
- Compensatory mechanisms are influenced by age of onset and prior visual experience.
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