TY - JOUR TI - Neuronal populations in the occipital cortex of the blind synchronize to the temporal dynamics of speech AU - Van Ackeren, Markus Johannes AU - Barbero, Francesca M AU - Mattioni, Stefania AU - Bottini, Roberto AU - Collignon, Olivier A2 - King, Andrew J VL - 7 PY - 2018 DA - 2018/01/17 SP - e31640 C1 - eLife 2018;7:e31640 DO - 10.7554/eLife.31640 UR - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.31640 AB - The occipital cortex of early blind individuals (EB) activates during speech processing, challenging the notion of a hard-wired neurobiology of language. But, at what stage of speech processing do occipital regions participate in EB? Here we demonstrate that parieto-occipital regions in EB enhance their synchronization to acoustic fluctuations in human speech in the theta-range (corresponding to syllabic rate), irrespective of speech intelligibility. Crucially, enhanced synchronization to the intelligibility of speech was selectively observed in primary visual cortex in EB, suggesting that this region is at the interface between speech perception and comprehension. Moreover, EB showed overall enhanced functional connectivity between temporal and occipital cortices that are sensitive to speech intelligibility and altered directionality when compared to the sighted group. These findings suggest that the occipital cortex of the blind adopts an architecture that allows the tracking of speech material, and therefore does not fully abstract from the reorganized sensory inputs it receives. KW - blindness KW - neuroplasticity KW - crossmodal KW - language KW - speech-tracking JF - eLife SN - 2050-084X PB - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd ER -