Functional connectivity revealed by rsfcMRI.

<p>A) Exploratory analysis (uncorrected; p<0.05) of ROI-pairs revealed widespread differences in functional connectivity between early blind and sighted control individuals. While patterns of increases and decreases in functional connectivity were evident, the overall trend was for a decrease in resting state temporal correlations in early blind compared to sighted controls. This included between occipital-motor regions, occipital somatosensory connections, as well as decreases in occipito-frontal and occipito-memory-related structures. Increases in functional connectivity were evident bilaterally between occipital regions and the pars orbitalis in the inferior frontal lobe. Bilateral increases involving the pars orbitalis were also observed to portions of the temporal lobe involved with auditory processing (namely, the transverse temporal, banks of the superior temporal sulcus, superior temporal, and middle temporal cortices). B) Ball and stick representation of increases and decreases in resting state connectivity between early ocular blind and sighted controls following FDR correction. Differences in connectivity strength are represented by line thickness, whereby thicker lines represent larger differences between the two groups (based on p-value). Increases are represented by orange lines, whereas decreases are represented by cyan lines. Dark blue spheres represent the nodes (i.e. ROIs) associated with the start and/or end points of the connections. A total of two connections showed an increase in functional connectivity after FDR correction (upper panel). These were between right transverse temporal and left pars orbitalis, as well as the right middle temporal and right pars orbitalis. A total of 22 connections showing a decrease in functional connectivity survived correction (lower panel). These were mainly inter-hemispheric and occipital connections were centered around the fusiform gyrus, orbitofrontal regions, and sensorimotor cortices. Additional decreases within both left and right hemispheres were seen between occipital and primary sensori-motor cortices. Abbreviations: L = left, R = right, cing = cingulate, front = frontal cortex, par = parietal cortex, ins = insula, temp = temporal cortex, occ = occipital cortex.