Department of Radiology and Tianjin Key Laboratory of Functional Imaging, Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, Tianjin 300052, China.
Neural Plast. 2013;2013:864920. doi: 10.1155/2013/864920. Epub 2013 Jun 6.
The visual cortex has been traditionally considered as a stimulus-driven, unimodal system with a hierarchical organization. However, recent animal and human studies have shown that the visual cortex responds to non-visual stimuli, especially in individuals with visual deprivation congenitally, indicating the supramodal nature of the functional representation in the visual cortex. To understand the neural substrates of the cross-modal processing of the non-visual signals in the visual cortex, we firstly showed the supramodal nature of the visual cortex. We then reviewed how the nonvisual signals reach the visual cortex. Moreover, we discussed if these non-visual pathways are reshaped by early visual deprivation. Finally, the open question about the nature (stimulus-driven or top-down) of non-visual signals is also discussed.
传统上，视觉皮层被认为是一个受刺激驱动的、单一模态的系统，具有分层组织。然而，最近的动物和人类研究表明，视觉皮层对非视觉刺激有反应，特别是在先天视觉剥夺的个体中，这表明视觉皮层的功能表现具有超模态性质。为了理解非视觉信号在视觉皮层中的跨模态处理的神经基础，我们首先展示了视觉皮层的超模态性质。然后，我们回顾了非视觉信号如何到达视觉皮层。此外，我们还讨论了这些非视觉通路是否会因早期视觉剥夺而重塑。最后，还讨论了非视觉信号的性质（受刺激驱动或自上而下）这一开放性问题。
