Resting-State Retinotopic Organization in the Absence of Retinal Input and Visual Experience.
Early visual areas have neuronal receptive fields that form a sampling mosaic of visual space, resulting in a series of retinotopic maps in which the same region of space is represented in multiple visual areas. It is not clear to what extent the development and maintenance of this retinotopic organization in humans depend on retinal waves and/or visual experience. We examined the corticocortical receptive field organization of resting-state BOLD data in normally sighted, early blind, and anophthalmic (in which both eyes fail to develop) individuals and found that resting-state correlations between V1 and V2/V3 were retinotopically organized for all subject groups. These results show that the gross retinotopic pattern of resting-state connectivity across V1-V3 requires neither retinal waves nor visual experience to develop and persist into adulthood. Significance statement: Evidence from resting-state BOLD data suggests that the connections between early visual areas develop and are maintained even in the absence of retinal waves and visual experience.
Department of Neurology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98177 bock.andrew@gmail.com ionefine@uw.edu.
Andrew S
AS
Bock
University of Pisa, Department of Translational Research on New Technologies in Medicine and Surgery, 56126 Pisa PI, Italy.
Paola
P
Binda
Department of Neurology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, New York 10003.
Noah C
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2365-8265
NC
Benson
Functional MRI of the Brain Centre, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, OX3 9DU, United Kingdom.
Holly
H
Bridge
Functional MRI of the Brain Centre, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, OX3 9DU, United Kingdom, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3UD, United Kingdom, and.
Kate E
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2621-482X
KE
Watkins
Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98177 bock.andrew@gmail.com ionefine@uw.edu.
Ione
I
Fine
D000328:Adult; D000853:Anophthalmos / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001766:Blindness / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology* / Q000503:physiopathology; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008564:Membrane Potentials; D008875:Middle Aged; D012160:Retina / Q000502:physiology / Q000503:physiopathology; D014794:Visual Fields; D014796:Visual Perception
blindness; cortical maps; fMRI; resting state; retinotopy; visual deprivation