PSC 131 Study Guide - Quiz Guide: Occipital Lobe, Visual Cortex, 3E
Document Summary
Visual cortex is more active during braille reading and tactile discrimination than sighted individuals. Or the activation could be meaningful, but related to any process involved in braille reading. These include tactile acuity, tactile discrimination, sentence comprehension, semantics etc. Qualities of braille reading that are different from just tactile discrimination seem to require occipital cortex processing in blind. Stokes are idiosyncratic and result in interesting case studies, but it is not known whether they will generalize. Show that occipital cortex activity is necessary for braille identification, but not simple discrimination. Also shows that timing if important and that the role of occipital cortex is later than somatosensory cortex. Suggests that occipital cortex is doing slightly higher order processing related to braille reading and/or comprehension. It is doing something very different than in sighted individuals. This suggests that there is a lot of possible plasticity in brain function, especially early on in life.
