The role of visual experience for the neural basis of spatial cognition

Blindness often results in the adaptive neural reorganization of the remaining modalities, producing sharper auditory and haptic behavioral performance. Yet, non-visual modalities might not be able to fully compensate for the lack of visual experience as in the case of congenital blindness. For exam...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews 2012-04, Vol.36 (4), p.1179-1187
Main Authors: PASQUALOTTO, Achille, PROULX, Michael J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Behavioral psychophysiology
Biological and medical sciences
Blindness
Blindness - congenital
Blindness - pathology
Blindness - psychology
Brain - physiopathology
Brain Chemistry - physiology
Cognition - physiology
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Medical sciences
Ophthalmology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Sensory Deprivation - physiology
Sensory Receptor Cells - physiology
Space Perception - physiology
Vision disorders
Visual Perception - physiology
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Summary:Blindness often results in the adaptive neural reorganization of the remaining modalities, producing sharper auditory and haptic behavioral performance. Yet, non-visual modalities might not be able to fully compensate for the lack of visual experience as in the case of congenital blindness. For example, developmental visual experience seems to be necessary for the maturation of multisensory neurons for spatial tasks. Additionally, the ability of vision to convey information in parallel might be taken into account as the main attribute that cannot be fully compensated by the spared modalities. Therefore, the lack of visual experience might impair all spatial tasks that require the integration of inputs from different modalities, such as having to represent a set of objects on the basis of the spatial relationships among the objects, rather than the spatial relationship that each object has with oneself. Here we integrate behavioral and neural evidence to conclude that visual experience is necessary for the neural development of normal spatial cognition.
ISSN:0149-7634
1873-7528
DOI:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2012.01.008