eprintid: 2884
rev_number: 9
eprint_status: archive
userid: 69
dir: disk0/00/00/28/84
datestamp: 2015-11-10 13:21:36
lastmod: 2016-09-13 09:51:04
status_changed: 2015-11-10 13:21:36
type: article
metadata_visibility: show
creators_name: Leo, Andrea
creators_name: Bernardi, Giulio
creators_name: Handjaras, Giacomo
creators_name: Bonino, Daniela
creators_name: Ricciardi, Emiliano
creators_name: Pietrini, Pietro
creators_id: 
creators_id: 
creators_id: 
creators_id: 
creators_id: emiliano.ricciardi@imtlucca.it
creators_id: pietro.pietrini@imtlucca.it
title: Increased BOLD Variability in the Parietal Cortex and Enhanced Parieto-Occipital Connectivity during Tactile Perception in Congenitally Blind Individuals
ispublished: pub
subjects: RC0321
divisions: CSA
full_text_status: public
abstract: Previous studies in early blind individuals posited a possible role of parieto-occipital connections in conveying nonvisual information to the visual occipital cortex. As a consequence of blindness, parietal areas would thus become able to integrate a greater amount of multimodal information than in sighted individuals. To verify this hypothesis, we compared fMRI-measured BOLD signal temporal variability, an index of efficiency in functional information integration, in congenitally blind and sighted individuals during tactile spatial discrimination and motion perception tasks. In both tasks, the BOLD variability analysis revealed many cortical regions with a significantly greater variability in the blind as compared to sighted individuals, with an overlapping cluster located in the left inferior parietal/anterior intraparietal cortex. A functional connectivity analysis using this region as seed showed stronger correlations in both tasks with occipital areas in the blind as compared to sighted individuals. As BOLD variability reflects neural integration and processing efficiency, these cross-modal plastic changes in the parietal cortex, even if described in a limited sample, reinforce the hypothesis that this region may play an important role in processing nonvisual information in blind subjects and act as a hub in the cortico-cortical pathway from somatosensory cortex to the reorganized occipital areas.
date: 2012
date_type: published
publication: Neural plasticity
volume: 2012
publisher: Hindawi Publishing Corporation
pagerange: 720278
id_number: 10.1155/2012/720278
refereed: TRUE
issn: 2090-5904
official_url: http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2012/720278
citation:   Leo, Andrea and Bernardi, Giulio and Handjaras, Giacomo and Bonino, Daniela and Ricciardi, Emiliano and Pietrini, Pietro  Increased BOLD Variability in the Parietal Cortex and Enhanced Parieto-Occipital Connectivity during Tactile Perception in Congenitally Blind Individuals.  Neural plasticity, 2012.  p. 720278.  ISSN 2090-5904      (2012)  
document_url: http://eprints.imtlucca.it/2884/1/720278%20%281%29.pdf