April 13, 2015

New study challenges conventional wisdom that sight-based brain sensory network organization is impaired with blindness




Is visual input essential to how the topographical map of the visual cortex develops in the human brain?

In new research published today, scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and in Germany and the USA show that the way in which the brain organizes its visual sense remains intact even in people who are blind from birth, and that at least the pattern of functional connectivity between the visual area and the topographical representation of space (up/down, left/right, etc.) can develop on its own without any actual visual experience.

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