Tactile Vision in the Blind: An fMRI Experiment on Pattern Recognition and Brain Plasticity

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This conference presentation

This conference presentation was based on extremely novel work, which ended up not progressing because of an unfortunate conjunction of factors (probably the study which I am most disappointed about in my career). Except for one single patient account by Sadato in 1999, this study was the first fMRI multi-subject project to show cross-modal plasticity of Occipital regions by touch in the blind. Importantly, it showed differential activation as a function of stimulus complexity. Finally, to my knowledge it was the first study to demonstrate cross-modal plasticity in people with usable residual vision as well as those who were totally blind (something which remains poorly studied.