Department of Physiology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec H3G 1Y6, Canada; Biological and Biomedical Engineering Graduate Program, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec H3G 1Y6, Canada.
Department of Physiology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec H3G 1Y6, Canada.
Trends Cogn Sci. 2022 Nov;26(11):999-1012. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2022.08.016. Epub 2022 Oct 5.
For centuries, anecdotal evidence such as the perfect pitch of the blind piano tuner or blind musician has supported the notion that individuals who have lost their sight early in life have superior hearing abilities compared with sighted people. Recently, auditory psychophysical and functional imaging studies have identified that specific auditory enhancements in the early blind can be linked to activation in extrastriate visual cortex, suggesting crossmodal plasticity. Furthermore, the nature of the sensory reorganization in occipital cortex supports the concept of a task-based functional cartography for the cerebral cortex rather than a sensory-based organization. In total, studies of early-blind individuals provide valuable insights into mechanisms of cortical plasticity and principles of cerebral organization.
几个世纪以来，一些轶事证据，如盲人钢琴调音师或盲人音乐家的完美音高，支持了这样一种观点，即早年失明的人比视力正常的人具有更出色的听力能力。最近，听觉心理物理学和功能成像研究表明，早期失明者的特定听觉增强与枕叶视觉皮层的激活有关，这表明存在跨模态可塑性。此外，枕叶皮层中的感觉重组的性质支持了大脑皮层基于任务的功能制图而非基于感觉的组织的概念。总的来说，对早期失明个体的研究为皮质可塑性的机制和大脑组织的原则提供了有价值的见解。
