Impact of a transient neonatal visual deprivation on the development of the ventral occipito-temporal cortex in humans.

ABSTRACT: How does sensory experience shape the development of the visual brain? To answer this eluding question, we examine brain responses to visual categories in a rare group of cataract-reversal individuals who experienced a short transient period of early blindness. Encoding of low-level visual properties is impaired in the early visual cortex (EVC) of cataract-reversal participants, whereas categorical responses in downstream ventral occipito-temporal cortex (VOTC) are preserved. In controls, degrading visual input to mimic the visual deficits of cataracts produces cascading disruptions extending from EVC to VOTC, unlike in the cataract group. A deep neural network trained on altered visual input reproduces this dissociation, supporting the brain findings. These results demonstrate that while

SUBMITTER: Mattioni S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12624091 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature