Behavioral/Cognitive How Visual Is the Visual Cortex? Comparing Connectional and Functional Fingerprints between Congenitally Blind and Sighted Individuals

Classical animal visual deprivation studies and human neuroimaging studies have shown that visual experience plays a critical role in shaping the functionality and connectivity of the visual cortex. Interestingly, recent studies have additionally reported circumscribed regions in thevisual cortex inwhich functional selectivitywas remarkably similar in individualswith andwithout visual experience.Here, by directly comparing resting-state and task-based fMRI data in congenitally blind and sighted human subjects, we obtained large-scale continuousmaps of the degree to which connectional and functional “fingerprints ” of ventral visual cortex depend on visual experience. We found a close agreement between connectional and functional maps, pointing to a strong interdependence of connectivity and function. Visual experience (or the absence thereof) had a pronounced effect on the resting-state connectivity and functional response profile of occipital cortex and the posterior lateral fusiform gyrus. By contrast, connectional and functional fingerprints in the anterior medial and posterior lateral parts of the ventral visual cortex were statistically indistinguishable between blind and sighted individuals. These results provide a large-scalemapping of the influence of visual experience on the development of both functional and connectivity properties of visual cortex, which serves as a basis for the formulation of new hypotheses regarding the functionality and plasticity of specific subregions. Key words: blind; connectional fingerprints; functional fingerprints; resting-state functional connectivity; ventral visual cortex; visual experienc