Araneda Rodrigo, Renier Laurent A, Rombaux Philippe, Cuevas Isabel, De Volder Anne G
Institute of Neuroscience (IoNS), Université catholique de Louvain Brussels, Belgium.
Institute of Neuroscience (IoNS), Université catholique de LouvainBrussels, Belgium; Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Cliniques Universitaires Saint-LucBrussels, Belgium.
Front Syst Neurosci. 2016 Aug 30;10:75. doi: 10.3389/fnsys.2016.00075. eCollection 2016.
Over the last decade, functional brain imaging has provided insight to the maturation processes and has helped elucidate the pathophysiological mechanisms involved in brain plasticity in the absence of vision. In case of congenital blindness, drastic changes occur within the deafferented "visual" cortex that starts receiving and processing non visual inputs, including olfactory stimuli. This functional reorganization of the occipital cortex gives rise to compensatory perceptual and cognitive mechanisms that help blind persons achieve perceptual tasks, leading to superior olfactory abilities in these subjects. This view receives support from psychophysical testing, volumetric measurements and functional brain imaging studies in humans, which are presented here.
在过去十年中，功能性脑成像为成熟过程提供了见解，并有助于阐明在无视觉情况下大脑可塑性所涉及的病理生理机制。在先天性失明的情况下，去传入的“视觉”皮层内会发生剧烈变化，该皮层开始接收和处理包括嗅觉刺激在内的非视觉输入。枕叶皮层的这种功能重组产生了补偿性的感知和认知机制，有助于盲人完成感知任务，从而使这些受试者具有卓越的嗅觉能力。这一观点得到了人类心理物理学测试、体积测量和功能性脑成像研究的支持，本文将对此进行介绍。
