Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, ul. Ingardena 6, 30-060, Kraków, Poland.
Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Solnavägen 9, 171 65 Solna, Stockholm, Sweden.
Cereb Cortex. 2024 Aug 1;34(8). doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhae324.
Blindness is associated with heightened sensory abilities, such as improved hearing and tactile acuity. Moreover, recent evidence suggests that blind individuals are better than sighted individuals at perceiving their own heartbeat, suggesting enhanced interoceptive accuracy. Structural changes in the occipital cortex have been hypothesized as the basis of these behavioral enhancements. Indeed, several studies have shown that congenitally blind individuals have increased cortical thickness within occipital areas compared to sighted individuals, but how these structural differences relate to behavioral enhancements is unclear. This study investigated the relationship between cardiac interoceptive accuracy and cortical thickness in 23 congenitally blind individuals and 23 matched sighted controls. Our results show a significant positive correlation between performance in a heartbeat counting task and cortical thickness only in the blind group, indicating a connection between structural changes in occipital areas and blind individuals' enhanced ability to perceive heartbeats.
失明与更高的感官能力有关，例如听力和触觉敏锐度的提高。此外，最近的证据表明，盲人比视力正常的人更能感知自己的心跳，这表明他们的内感受准确性更高。枕叶皮层的结构变化被假设为这些行为增强的基础。事实上，几项研究表明，与视力正常的人相比，先天性盲人的枕叶区域皮质厚度增加，但这些结构差异与行为增强之间的关系尚不清楚。本研究调查了 23 名先天性盲人个体和 23 名匹配的视力正常对照者的心脏内感受准确性与皮质厚度之间的关系。我们的结果显示，在心跳计数任务中的表现与皮质厚度之间存在显著的正相关，仅在盲人组中出现，这表明枕叶区域的结构变化与盲人增强感知心跳的能力之间存在联系。
