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Neuronal populations in the occipital cortex of the blind synchronize to the temporal dynamics of speech

Markus J. van Ackeren, Francesca Barbero, Stefania Mattioni, Roberto Bottini, View ORCID ProfileOlivier Collignon
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/186338
Markus J. van Ackeren
1Center for Mind/Brain Studies, University of Trento, Trento, Italy
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  • For correspondence: olivier.collignon@uclouvain.be
Francesca Barbero
2Institute of research in Psychology (IPSY) & Institute of Neuroscience (IoNS) - University of Louvain (UCL), Louvain, Belgium
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Stefania Mattioni
1Center for Mind/Brain Studies, University of Trento, Trento, Italy
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Roberto Bottini
1Center for Mind/Brain Studies, University of Trento, Trento, Italy
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Olivier Collignon
1Center for Mind/Brain Studies, University of Trento, Trento, Italy
2Institute of research in Psychology (IPSY) & Institute of Neuroscience (IoNS) - University of Louvain (UCL), Louvain, Belgium
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  • ORCID record for Olivier Collignon
  • For correspondence: olivier.collignon@uclouvain.be
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Abstract

The occipital cortex of early blind individuals (EB) activates during speech processing, challenging the notion of a hard-wired neurobiology of language. But, at what stage of speech processing do occipital regions participate in EB?Here we demonstrate that parieto-occipital regions in EB enhance their synchronization to acoustic fluctuations in human speech in the theta-range (corresponding to syllabic rate), irrespective of speech intelligibility. Crucially, enhanced synchronization to the intelligibility of speech was selectively observed in primary visual cortex in EB, suggesting that this region is at the interface between speech perception and comprehension. Moreover, EB showed overall enhanced functional connectivity between temporal and occipital cortices sensitive to speech intelligibility and altered directionality when compared to the sighted group. These findings suggest that the occipital cortex of the blind adopts an architecture allowing the tracking of speech material, and therefore does not fully abstract from the reorganized sensory inputs it receives.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
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Posted September 08, 2017.
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Neuronal populations in the occipital cortex of the blind synchronize to the temporal dynamics of speech
Markus J. van Ackeren, Francesca Barbero, Stefania Mattioni, Roberto Bottini, Olivier Collignon
bioRxiv 186338; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/186338
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Neuronal populations in the occipital cortex of the blind synchronize to the temporal dynamics of speech
Markus J. van Ackeren, Francesca Barbero, Stefania Mattioni, Roberto Bottini, Olivier Collignon
bioRxiv 186338; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/186338

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