The fine-scale functional correlation of striate cortex in sighted and blind people

Omar H. Butt, Noah C. Benson, Ritobrato Datta, Geoffrey K. Aguirre

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

60 Scopus citations

Abstract

To what extent are spontaneous neural signals within striate cortex organized by vision? We examined the fine-scale pattern of striate cortex correlations within and between hemispheres in rest-state BOLD fMRI data from sighted and blind people. In the sighted, we find that corticocortico correlation is well modeled as a Gaussian point-spread function across millimeters of striate cortical surface, rather than degrees of visual angle. Blindness produces a subtle change in the pattern of fine-scale striate correlations between hemispheres. Across participants blind before the age of 18, the degree of pattern alteration covaries with the strength of long-range correlation between left striate cortex and Broca's area. This suggests that early blindness exchanges local, vision-driven pattern synchrony of the striate cortices for long-range functional correlations potentially related to cross-modal representation.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)16209-16219
Number of pages11
JournalJournal of Neuroscience
Volume33
Issue number41
DOIs
StatePublished - 2013

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