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Authors & Affiliations
Elena Aggius-Vella, Daniel-Robert Chebat, Shachar Maidenbaum, Amir Amedi
Abstract
Retinotopically organized visual area 6 (V6) processes optic flow in animals and humans. We previously demonstrated that V6 is a sensory independent area involved in egocentric navigation. Indeed, V6 of congenitally blind (CB) people encodes auditory input for egocentric navigation similarly to the way V6 of sighted people encodes visual cues. In the current study, rest functional connectivity was used to investigate training induced brain connectivity changes in CB participants. CB participants were scanned during resting state sessions before and after a three-day training period learning to navigate in mazes using the EyeCane, a sensory substitution device (SSD). Before training, functionally defined area V6 is connected with areas of the dorsal network while it is anti-correlated with mediotemporal areas, suggesting a ‘division’ between egocentric and allocentric spatial reference frames. After training however, V6 extends its connectivity to areas of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (9-46d) and anterior cingulate (24pr). These newly established connections may underlie the long-term plasticity observed in area V6 for processing auditory navigation cues, potentially reflecting the adaptation following training with the EyeCane and facilitating the acquisition of maze navigation skills. Our findings demonstrate that training can alter connectivity and induce long term plasticity in the dorsal stream. Since frontal areas are strongly involved in higher-order cognitive processes and in active control of planned behavior, results suggest that training the dorsal stream could be explored as a potential strategy to mitigate cognitive decline, especially for Alzheimer research since degeneration affects mainly the navigation network until reaching frontal areas.