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Relationship Between Cortical Thickness and Functional Activation in the Early Blind
Irina Anurova1, Laurent A Renier2, Anne G De Volder3
1Laboratory of Integrative Neuroscience and Cognition, Department of Neuroscience, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC 20057, USA Neuroscience Unit, Institute of Biomedicine/Physiology, University of Helsinki, Helsinki 00014, Finland.
Cerebral Cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)
|February 13, 2014
Summary
Early blindness alters brain structure and function. Cortical thickness changes in blind individuals correlate with brain activity, suggesting early sensory experience shapes neural connections.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Neuroscience
- Sensory Processing
Background:
- Early blindness causes significant structural and functional brain changes.
- The relationship between these structural and functional alterations is not well understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate alterations in cortical thickness (CT) due to early visual deprivation.
- To examine the relationship between CT changes and cortical activity in early blind (EB) individuals.
Main Methods:
- Structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was used.
- 12 early blind (EB) humans and 12 sighted controls (SC) participated.
- Tasks involved auditory localization, pitch identification, and sound detection.
Main Results:
- Functional brain activation during auditory tasks correlated negatively with cortical thickness in occipital areas of EB individuals.
- This inverse relationship was also observed in nonprimary auditory areas of sighted controls (SC).
- Findings suggest a link between cortical structure and function influenced by early sensory experience.
Conclusions:
- The relationship between brain structure and function is modulated by early sensory experience, likely through synaptic pruning.
- Activity-dependent effects of sensory deprivation and practice interact with normal brain development.
- These combined processes shape the lifelong interplay between brain structure and function.
