TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2017//
TI  - Visual experience shapes the neural networks remapping touch into external space
JO  - Journal of neuroscience
A1  - Crollen, Virginie
A1  - Lazzouni, Latifa
A1  - Rezk, Mohamed
A1  - Bellemare, Antoine
A1  - Lepore, Franco
A1  - Collignon, Olivier
SP  - 10097
EP  - 10103
VL  - 37
IS  - 42
N2  - Localizing touch relies on the activation of skin-based and externally defined spatial frames of references. Psychophysical studies have demonstrated that early visual deprivation prevents the automatic remapping of touch into external space. We used fMRI to characterize how visual experience impacts on the brain circuits dedicated to the spatial processing of touch. Sighted and congenitally blind humans performed a tactile temporal order judgment (TOJ) task, either with the hands uncrossed or crossed over the body midline. Behavioral data confirmed that crossing the hands has a detrimental effect on TOJ judgments in sighted but not in early blind people. Crucially, the crossed hand posture elicited enhanced activity, when compared to the uncrossed posture, in a fronto-parietal network in the sighted group only. Psychophysiological interaction analysis revealed, however, that the congenitally blind showed enhanced functional connectivity between parietal and frontal regions in the crossed versus uncrossed hand postures. Our results demonstrate that visual experience scaffolds the neural implementation of the location of touch in space.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTIn daily life, we seamlessly localize touch in external space for action planning toward a stimulus making contact with the body. For efficient sensori-motor integration, the brain has therefore to compute the current position of our limbs in the external world. In the present study, we demonstrate that early visual deprivation alters the brain activity in a dorsal parieto-frontal network typically supporting touch localization in the sighted. Our results therefore conclusively demonstrate the intrinsic role developmental vision plays in scaffolding the neural implementation of touch perception.<br><br>Copyright © 2017 the authors.<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 0270-6474
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1213-17.2017
ID  - ref1
ER  -