Deafness

I study how the auditory cortex develops when it is deprived of auditory input, in people born deaf. I focus on the functional connectivity basis of large-scale tonotopic and stream organization.

 

Specifically, I showed recently that the topographic network organization underlying tone-preference (tonotopic/cochleotopic) mapping develops without auditory experience, and is maintained through life, in people born profoundly deaf.

This finding resembles the intact connectivity organization for spatial, retinotopic, mapping of the visual cortex found in people born blind, both providing support for the importance of innate (prenatal) connectivity development in brain organization.