Blind individuals exhibit substantial cortical remodelling between sensory cortices, but whether this occurs in the normal adult brain is unknown. In this study, sighted individuals who attended a 9-month course in reading Braille exhibited substantial cross-modal reorganization in visual cortical areas including the visual word form area (VWFA). Subjects also had strengthened resting-state connectivity between visual and somatosensory cortices, and disruption of VWFA activity by transcranial magnetic stimulation decreased Braille reading accuracy. These findings suggest that cortical reorganization can occur in the healthy adult brain when learning complex tasks.
References
Siuda-Krzywicka, K. et al. Massive cortical reorganization in sighted Braille readers. eLife http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.10762 (2016)
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Lewis, S. Crossing territories. Nat Rev Neurosci 17, 264 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn.2016.50
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn.2016.50