Title:Brain plasticity in those born blind

A study led by Georgetown University neuroscientists and described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last July will have profound implications for understanding brain development and could help launch personalized rehabilitation and sight restoration strategies.

For decades, scientists have known that the visual cortex in people born blind responds to myriad stimuli, including touch, smell, sound localization, memory recall, and response to language. However, the lack of a common thread linking the tasks that activate primary areas in the visual cortex has perplexed researchers. The new study, led by Lénia Amaral, a postdoctoral researcher; and Ella Striem-Amit, the Edwin H. Richard and Elisabeth Richard von Matsch Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at Georgetown University’s School of Medicine, offers a compelling explanation: differences in how each individual’s brain organizes itself.

“We don’t see this level of variation in the visual cortex connectivity among individuals who can see—the connectivity of the visual cortex is usually fairly consistent,” said Striem-Amit, who leads the Sensory and Motor Plasticity Lab at Georgetown. “The connectivity pattern in people born blind is more different across people, like an individual fingerprint, and is stable over time—so much so that the individual person can be identified from the connectivity pattern.”