Topic: congenitally blind people

The ability to accurately localize sound sources is crucial for human and other animals. An important question is: how could the brain calibrate its space map in response to changes to acoustic cues during a lifetime (e.g. in development, aging, sensory loss)? Currently we still lack a comprehensive answer. Existing models have focused on supervised learning, in which the auditory system is calibrated by exactly matching feedback signals from the precise visual system. But such cross-sensory calibration is not always feasible. It is unclear how to calibrate the auditory map when

Mounting evidence suggests that autobiographical memory is crucially dependent on our ability to construct visual mental images. Indeed, we have found previously that aphantasics (people who cannot construct mental images) have more difficulties to recall personal memories than controls and that aphantasics showed decreased hippocampal activation during autobiographical memory. While aphantasia is a subjective condition of deficient mental imagery, in a follow-up study, we examine the neural correlates of autobiographical memory in a very rare patient population, people who are blind from birt