Organization and Reorganization of Sensory-Deprived Cortex

The scientific literature has grown rich in research illustrating the remarkable ability of the brain to reorganize itself following sensory loss. In particular, visually deafferented regions within the occipital cortex of early blind individuals have been repeatedly shown to be functionally recruited to carry out a wide variety of nonvisual tasks. While the novelty of such a finding might be wearing off, more recent research has begun to examine whether this crossmodal takeover of the occipital cortex in blindness follows some sort of organizational principle. Here we first review the most recent evidence from neuroimaging studies that illustrate how the pre-existing functional specialization of cortical sub-regions appears to be preserved following sensory deprivation. We discuss and compare work on visual and auditory deprivation, as well as research on individuals with intact sensory systems. We suggest avenues for future exploration of these issues, such as identifying the neuroanatomical markers of crossmodal plasticity and elucidating the behavioral relevance of observed changes.