Response to short-term deprivation of the human adult visual cortex measured with 7T BOLD
- University of Pisa, Italy
- IRCCS Stella Maris, Italy
Abstract
Sensory deprivation during the post-natal 'critical period' leads to structural reorganization of the developing visual cortex. In adulthood, the visual cortex retains some flexibility and adapts to sensory deprivation. Here we show that short-term (2h) monocular deprivation in adult humans boosts the BOLD response to the deprived eye, changing ocular dominance of V1 vertices, consistent with homeostatic plasticity. The boost is strongest in V1, present in V2, V3 and V4 but absent in V3a and hMT+. Assessment of spatial frequency tuning in V1 by a population Receptive-Field technique shows that deprivation primarily boosts high spatial frequencies, consistent with a primary involvement of the parvocellular pathway. Crucially, the V1 deprivation effect correlates across participants with the perceptual increase of the deprived eye dominance assessed with binocular rivalry, suggesting a common origin. Our results demonstrate that visual cortex, particularly the ventral pathway, retains a high potential for homeostatic plasticity in the human adult.
Data availability
BOLD responses and pRF fits as shown in all figures (main and supplementary) have been deposited on Dryad, through a link provided with the current submission (doi:10.5061/dryad.tp24j18). Custom Matlab code, used for pRF fitting, is included as Source code file 1.
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Short-term plasticity of the human adult visual cortex measured with 7T BOLDDryad Digital Repository, doi:10.5061/dryad.tp24j18.
Article and author information
Author details
Maria Concetta Morrone
Funding
European Research Council (ERC ECSPLAIN 338866)
- Paola Binda
- Jan W Kurzawski
- Maria Concetta Morrone
Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Università e della Ricerca (PRIN2015)
- Claudia Lunghi
- Maria Concetta Morrone
European Research Council (ERA-NET Neuro-DREAM)
- Claudia Lunghi
- Maria Concetta Morrone
European Union Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (NextGenVis 641805)
- Jan W Kurzawski
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Human subjects: Experimental procedures are in line with the declaration of Helsinki and were approved by the regional ethics committee [Comitato Etico Pediatrico Regionale-Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria Meyer-Firenze (FI)] and by the Italian Ministry of Health, under the protocol 'Plasticità e multimodalità delle prime aree visive: studio in risonanza magnetica a campo ultra alto (7T)'.
Copyright
© 2018, Binda et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Response to short-term deprivation of the human adult visual cortex measured with 7T BOLD
eLife 7:e40014.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.40014
