Past events: Ane Gurtubay-Antolin. Tactile processing and plasticity mechanisms in blindness

What: Tactile processing and plasticity mechanisms in blindness

Where: Zoom Room 2

Who: Ane Gurtubay-Antolin, PhD, Postdoctoral Researcher, Crossmodal Perception and Plasticity laboratory (CPP-Lab), UCLouvain, Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium.

When: Thursday, September 10th at 12 PM.

We identify objects by touch countless times every day, specially under poor visual conditions. While the neural substrates of tactile processing are well established, the consequences of visual deprivation on haptic processing or the structural scaffolding  underlying crossmodal plasticity in blind population are ill-understood. Whereas a line of research associates blindness with an enhanced performance in non-visual tasks, other researchers support that the atrophy of elements of the visual system lead to maladaptations in the remaining senses. By means of electrophysiological data recorded during an haptic discrimination task I will show that early blind population process some, but no all, tactile information faster than the sighted. Further, using diffusion imaging I will provide evidence for the existence of a neural pathway that could convey auditory information to the occipital cortex of the blind allowing crossmodal reorganization of visual areas.