Related Experiment Video
Updated: Sep 10, 2025
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Development of a Gaze-Contingent Display Framework Designed for Perceptual and Oculomotor Research with Simulated Central Vision Loss
Published on: April 11, 2025
559
Visual and Auditory Object Representations in Ventral Visual Cortex After Restoring Sight in Humans
Katarzyna Rączy1, Madita Linke1, Job van den Hurk2,3
1Biological Psychology and Neuropsychology, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.
Human Brain Mapping
|August 25, 2025
Summary
Congenital blindness may impact face processing after sight restoration. Individuals with restored sight showed reduced face selectivity in the ventral occipital temporal cortex (VOTC), suggesting cross-modal activity might influence visual recovery.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Neuroscience
- Visual Perception
Background:
- Ventral occipital temporal cortex (VOTC) develops visual category selectivity early in infancy.
- Congenitally blind individuals show VOTC category selectivity for non-visual stimuli (auditory, haptic).
- The impact of restored vision on VOTC visual responses in congenital blindness is unknown.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if VOTC exhibits category-selective visual responses after sight restoration in individuals with congenital blindness.
- To test the hypothesis that cross-modal VOTC activation due to congenital blindness interferes with visual processing post-sight recovery.
Main Methods:
- Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study.
- Participants: Adults with restored sight after transient congenital blindness (cataracts) and normally sighted controls.
- Tasks: Visual (movies of objects, faces, scenes, body parts) and auditory (corresponding sounds) stimuli presented.
Main Results:
- Reduced face selectivity in the ventral occipital temporal cortex (VOTC) of individuals with restored sight compared to controls.
- A double dissociation was observed: sight-recovery individuals decoded visual categories from auditory representations, while controls decoded auditory from visual representations.
- These findings suggest altered neural mechanisms for category representation after congenital blindness and sight restoration.
Conclusions:
- Restored vision in individuals with a history of congenital blindness is associated with reduced face selectivity in the VOTC.
- Potential deficits in central visual field representation in lower-tier visual areas may contribute to reduced face selectivity.
- Cross-modal activity in higher-order visual areas might facilitate, rather than hinder, visual functional recovery.
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