Berto Martina, Ricciardi Emiliano, Pietrini Pietro, Bottari Davide
Molecular Mind Lab, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, 55100 Lucca, Italy.
iScience. 2021 Oct 30;24(11):103383. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2021.103383. eCollection 2021 Nov 19.
The auditory system relies on local and global representations to discriminate sounds. This study investigated whether vision influences the development and functioning of these fundamental sound computations. We employed a computational approach to control statistical properties embedded in sounds and tested samples of sighted controls (SC) and congenitally (CB) and late-onset (LB) blind individuals in two experiments. In experiment 1, performance relied on local features analysis; in experiment 2, performance benefited from computing global representations. In both experiments, SC and CB performance remarkably overlapped. Conversely, LB performed systematically worse than the other groups when relying on local features, with no alterations on global representations. Results suggest that auditory computations tested here develop independently from vision. The efficiency of local auditory processing can be hampered in case sight becomes unavailable later in life, supporting the existence of an audiovisual interplay for the processing of auditory details, which emerges only in late development.
听觉系统依靠局部和全局表征来辨别声音。本研究调查了视觉是否会影响这些基本声音计算的发育和功能。我们采用了一种计算方法来控制声音中嵌入的统计特性，并在两个实验中对视力正常的对照组（SC）、先天性失明（CB）和迟发性失明（LB）个体的样本进行了测试。在实验1中，表现依赖于局部特征分析；在实验2中，表现得益于全局表征的计算。在两个实验中，SC和CB的表现显著重叠。相反，当依赖局部特征时，LB的表现系统地比其他组差，而在全局表征方面没有变化。结果表明，此处测试的听觉计算独立于视觉发育。如果在生命后期失去视力，局部听觉处理的效率可能会受到阻碍，这支持了在听觉细节处理中存在视听相互作用的观点，而这种相互作用仅在发育后期才出现。
