PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Stefania Benetti
AU  - Markus J. van Ackeren
AU  - Giuseppe Rabini
AU  - Joshua Zonca
AU  - Valentina Foa
AU  - Francesca Baruffaldi
AU  - Mohamed Rezk
AU  - Francesco Pavani
AU  - Bruno Rossion
AU  - Olivier Collignon
TI  - Functional selectivity for face processing in the temporal voice area of early deaf individuals
AID  - 10.1101/154138
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 154138
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/06/23/154138.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/06/23/154138.full
AB  - Brain systems supporting face and voice processing both contribute to the extraction of important information for social interaction (e.g., person identity). How does the brain reorganize when one of these channels is absent? Here we explore this question by combining behavioral and multimodal neuroimaging measures (magneto-encephalography and functional imaging) in a group of early deaf humans. We show enhanced selective neural response for faces and for individual face coding in a specific region of the auditory cortex that is typically specialized for voice perception in hearing individuals. In this region, selectivity to face signals emerges early in the visual processing hierarchy, shortly following typical face-selective responses in the ventral visual pathway. Functional and effective connectivity analyses suggest reorganization in long-range connections from early visual areas to the face-selective temporal area in individuals with early and profound deafness. Altogether, these observations demonstrate that regions that typically specialize for voice processing in the hearing brain preferentially reorganize for face processing in born deaf people. Our results support the idea that cross-modal plasticity in case of early sensory deprivation relates to the original functional specialization of the reorganized brain regions.