Chapter 15 - Task-selectivity in the sensory deprived brain and sensory substitution approaches for clinical practice: Evidence from blindness

Abstract

What are the principles underlying the emergence of specializations in the human brain? In the last few decades, convergent evidence from studies with sensory deprived populations such as blind and deaf adults showed that most of the known specialized regions in higher-order “visual” and “auditory” cortices maintained their anatomically consistent category-selective properties in the absence of visual/auditory experience when input was provided by other senses carrying category-specific information. Here, we will review the main results of such studies with a special focus on results obtained with sensory substitution devices and their implications for sensory restoration. Our emphasis will be on the proposed brain mechanisms underlying this type of (re)-organization that we term task-selective and sensory-independent (TSSI), on the (re)-definition of the classic assumptions regarding critical periods of development, and on the crucial role of multisensory training to maximize sensory restoration outcomes.