September 2024
Volume 24, Issue 10
Open Access
Vision Sciences Society Annual Meeting Abstract  |   September 2024
Individual differences of brain plasticity in early visual deprivation
Author Affiliations
  • Ella Striem-Amit
    Department of Neuroscience, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC 20057, USA
Journal of Vision September 2024, Vol.24, 198. doi:https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.24.10.198
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      Ella Striem-Amit; Individual differences of brain plasticity in early visual deprivation. Journal of Vision 2024;24(10):198. https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.24.10.198.

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      © ARVO (1962-2015); The Authors (2016-present)

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Abstract

Early-onset blindness leads to reorganization in visual cortex connectivity and function. However, this has mostly been studied at the group level, largely ignoring differences in brain reorganization across early blind individuals. To test whether plasticity manifests differently in different blind individuals, we studied resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) from the primary visual cortex in a large cohort of blind individuals. We find increased individual differences in connectivity patterns, corresponding to areas that show reorganization in blindness. Further, using a longitudinal approach in repeatedly sampled blind individuals, we showed that such individual patterns of organization and plasticity are stable over time, to the degree of decoding individual participant identity over 2 years. Together, these findings suggest that visual cortex reorganization is not ubiquitous, highlighting the potential diversity in brain plasticity and the importance of harnessing individual differences for fitting rehabilitation approaches for vision loss.

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