Arbel Roni, Heimler Benedetta, Amedi Amir
Department of Medical Neurobiology, Hadassah Ein-Kerem, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.
Faculty of Medicine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.
Front Neurosci. 2022 Oct 3;16:921321. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2022.921321. eCollection 2022.
Previous evidence suggests that visual experience is crucial for the emergence and tuning of the typical neural system for face recognition. To challenge this conclusion, we trained congenitally blind adults to recognize faces visual-to-auditory sensory-substitution (SDD). Our results showed a preference for trained faces over other SSD-conveyed visual categories in the fusiform gyrus and in other known face-responsive-regions of the deprived ventral visual stream. We also observed a parametric modulation in the same cortical regions, for face orientation (upright vs. inverted) and face novelty (trained vs. untrained). Our results strengthen the conclusion that there is a predisposition for sensory-independent and computation-specific processing in specific cortical regions that can be retained in life-long sensory deprivation, independently of previous perceptual experience. They also highlight that if the right training is provided, such cortical preference maintains its tuning to what were considered visual-specific face features.
先前的证据表明，视觉体验对于典型的人脸识别神经系统的出现和调整至关重要。为了挑战这一结论，我们训练了先天性失明的成年人通过视觉到听觉的感官替代（SDD）来识别面孔。我们的结果显示，在梭状回以及剥夺性腹侧视觉通路的其他已知面部反应区域中，相比于其他通过SSD传达的视觉类别，对训练过的面孔存在偏好。我们还在相同的皮质区域观察到了对面孔朝向（正立与倒立）和面孔新奇性（训练过的与未训练过的）的参数调制。我们的结果强化了这样的结论：在特定皮质区域存在对感觉独立和计算特定处理的倾向，这种倾向在终身感觉剥夺中可以保留，而与先前的感知经验无关。它们还强调，如果提供正确的训练，这种皮质偏好会保持其对被认为是视觉特定面部特征的调整。
