Occipito-Parietal involvement for auditory spatial processing
Poster Presentation

Olivier Collignon
Neural Rehabilitation Engineering Laboratory, Université catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium

Marco Davare
Laboratory of Neurophysiology, Université catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium

Anne G. De Volder
Neural Rehabilitation Engineering Laboratory, Université catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium

Maryse Lassonde
Centre de Recherche en Neuropsychologie et Cognition, Université de Montréal, Canada

Franco Lepore
Centre de Recherche en Neuropsychologie et Cognition, Université de Montréal, Canada

Etienne Olivier
Laboratory of Neurophysiology, Université catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium

Claude Veraart
Neural Rehabilitation Engineering Laboratory, Université catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium

     Abstract ID Number: 96
     Full text: Not available
     Last modified: March 21, 2005

Abstract
It has long been argued that the occipital cortex exclusively process visual information. However, recent studies have challenged this modality-specific view by showing that some occipital areas could also respond to auditory and tactile inputs in sighted subjects. Moreover, it has long been demonstrated that the occipital cortex of early blind subjects is extensively involved in non-visual perception suggesting a remarkable degree of plasticity in the developing human brain. In the present work, we investigated the functional involvement of the occipital cortex for auditory processing in early blind and sighted subjects. For this purpose, we used the technique of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) in order to induce a transient disruption of the activity in areas belonging to the occipito-parietal pathway. TMS was applied during various auditory tasks that consisted of sound pitch, intensity and spatial discriminations as well as the use of a prosthesis substituting vision by audition. Results demonstrated that early visual deprivation leads to functional cross-modal cerebral reorganization and also points to the specific involvement of the dorsal visual stream for auditory spatial processing.