Abstract
The task-specific principle asserts that, following deafness or blindness, the deprived cortex is reorganized in a manner such that the task of a given area is preserved even though its input modality has been switched. Accordingly, tactile reading engages the ventral occipitotemporal cortex (vOT) in the blind in a similar way to regular reading in the sighted. Others, however, show that the vOT of the blind processes spoken sentence structure, which suggests that the task-specific principle might not apply to vOT. The strongest evidence for the vOT's engagement in sighted reading comes from orthographic repetition-suppression studies. Here, congenitally blind adults were tested in an fMRI repetition-suppression paradigm. Results reveal a double dissociation, with tactile orthographic priming in the vOT and auditory priming in general language areas. Reconciling our finding with other evidence, we propose that the vOT in the blind serves multiple functions, one of which, orthographic processing, overlaps with its function in the sighted.
Highlights
A number of studies have put forth the idea that cortical regions might preserve their function even though their sensory modality has been switched
We found a double dissociation between tactile orthographic repetition suppression in the left ventral occipitotemporal cortex (vOT) and auditory repetition suppression in the left STS
When presented with tactile stimuli, the vOT of the blind showed a repetition suppression effect that has been observed in the VWFA of the sighted for visual pseudowords (Glezer et al, 2009, 2015)
Summary
A number of studies have put forth the idea that cortical regions might preserve their function even though their sensory modality has been switched. These studies used tasks that can be accomplished in more than one sensory modality, for example, both in the visual one and the tactile one. Auditory areas in the deaf, in turn, can be recruited for visual rhythm (Bola, Zimmermann, et al, 2017) and visual face recognition (Benetti et al, 2017) These studies suggest that, as a rule, the deprived cortical areas preserve their task specificity (Amedi, Hofstetter, Maidenbaum, & Heimler, 2017; Merabet & Pascual-Leone, 2010). The retinotopic and occipitotemporal visual cortices in the blind are activated during verb generation (Amedi, Raz, Pianka, Malach, & Zohary, 2003), and TMS of this brain
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