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Scientific article
Open access
English

Visual attention to the periphery is enhanced in congenitally deaf individuals

Published inJournal of Neuroscience, vol. 20, no. 17, p. RC931-936
Publication date2000
Abstract

We compared normally hearing individuals and congenitally deaf individuals as they monitored moving stimuli either in the periphery or in the center of the visual field. When participants monitored the peripheral visual field, greater recruitment (as measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging) of the motion-selective area MT/MST was observed in deaf than in hearing individuals, whereas the two groups were comparable when attending to the central visual field. This finding indicates an enhancement of visual attention to peripheral visual space in deaf individuals. Structural equation modeling was used to further characterize the nature of this plastic change in the deaf. The effective connectivity between MT/MST and the posterior parietal cortex was stronger in deaf than in hearing individuals during peripheral but not central attention. Thus, enhanced peripheral attention to moving stimuli in the deaf may be mediated by alterations of the connectivity between MT/MST and the parietal cortex, one of the primary centers for spatial representation and attention.

Keywords
  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Analysis of Variance
  • Attention/physiology
  • Brain Mapping
  • Deafness/congenital/physiopathology
  • Echo-Planar Imaging
  • Eye Movements
  • Female
  • Fixation
  • Ocular
  • Functional Laterality
  • Humans
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging
  • Male
  • Models
  • Neurological
  • Motion Perception
  • Neuronal Plasticity
  • Parietal Lobe/physiology/physiopathology
  • Photic Stimulation/methods
  • Recruitment
  • Neurophysiological
  • Visual Cortex/physiology/physiopathology
  • Visual Perception/physiology
Affiliation Not a UNIGE publication
Citation (ISO format)
BAVELIER, Daphné et al. Visual attention to the periphery is enhanced in congenitally deaf individuals. In: Journal of Neuroscience, 2000, vol. 20, n° 17, p. RC931–936. doi: 10.1523/jneurosci.20-17-j0001.2000
Main files (1)
Article (Published version)
accessLevelPublic
Identifiers
ISSN of the journal0270-6474
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392downloads

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