Naturalistic Audio-Movies and Narrative Synchronize "Visual" Cortices across Congenitally Blind But Not Sighted...

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 backward (lacking both language and plot). For both groups, early auditory cortices were synchronized to a similar degree across stimulus types, whereas higher-cognitive temporoparietal 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 backward speech and intermediate for sentence shuffle. Meaningful auditory stimuli synchronize visual cortices of people born blind.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Naturalistic 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.