Contributions of Innate Constraints and Experience to the Development of Visual Cortex: Evidence from Infants and Blind Adults

Description

How do innate constraints and experience contribute to the function of the human visual system? This symposium presents complementary insights into this question from studies with sighted infants and adults with different visual experience: congenitally blind and sighted adults. Recent fMRI studies with sighted infants suggest key signatures of visual cortical anatomy and function are present shortly after birth, as featured in the first two talks. Ayzenberg shows large-scale anatomical and functional organization of the visual system is similar across newborns and sighted adults. However, ventral and dorsal pathways have
different developmental trajectories; ventral stream connectivity profiles develop later. Kosakowski examines domain-specific functional specialization in infant ventral occipitotemporal cortex (vOTC). In sighted adults, vOTC contains regions preferring different object categories (faces, scenes, bodies). Kosakowski shows these category-specific responses are present shortly after birth. These first two talks highlight similarities between infant and adult brain organization and function. Next, evidence from congenitally blind and sighted adults
suggest commonalities but also function differences across populations. Past research found responses to tactile faces and human voices in lateral vOTC (i.e., ‘FFA’) of blind adults, suggesting a preserved role in person recognition. However, other studies find the lateral vOTC responds to spoken language. Do visual cortices preserve their behavioral role in blindness? Saccone shows a robust preference for language in ‘FFA’ over other ‘human vocalization’ conditions, inconsistent with a person-recognition role. Last, Collignon brings together
data from both infants and sighted and blind adults. They examine auditory responses to different object categories in the visual system and show greater distinctions between categories in sighted adults than infants,
and in blind than sighted adults, suggesting partial similarity across blind and sighted people. Together, these talks provide evidence for innate organization in the human visual system but also reveal the potential to retool for non-visual/sensory roles.

Period	17 Jun 2024
Event title	International Mulitsensory Research Forum
Event type	Conference
Conference number	22
Location	RENO, United StatesShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International