Decoding Visual Location From Neural Patterns in the Auditory Cortex of the Congenitally Deaf

Sensory cortices of individuals who are congenitally deprived of a sense can exhibit considerable plasticity and be recruited to process information from the senses that remain intact. Here, we explored whether the auditory cortex of congenitally deaf individuals represents visual field location of a stimulusa dimension that is represented in early visual areas. We used functional MRI to measure neural activity in auditory and visual cortices of congenitally deaf and hearing humans while they observed stimuli typically used for mapping visual field preferences in visual cortex. We found that the location of a visual stimulus can be successfully decoded from the patterns of neural activity in auditory cortex of congenitally deaf but not hearing individuals. This is particularly true for locations within the horizontal plane and within peripheral vision. These data show that the representations stored within neuroplastically changed auditory cortex can align with dimensions that are typically represented in visual cortex.- J. Almeida was funded by European Commission Seventh Framework Programme 2007-2013 Grant No. PCOFUND-GA-2009-246542 and by Fundacao BIAL Grant 112/12. F. Fang was funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) Grants 30925014 and 31230029. B. Z. Mahon was supported by U.S. National Institutes of Health Grants R21NS076176 and R01NS089609. Y. Bi was funded by NSFC Grants 31171073 and 31222024. This research was supported by Fundacao BIAL.