Olivier Collignon, Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), Belgium, has given a talk on Zoom on May 16th.
https://cpplab.be/
He has been invited by Jessica Dubois and Florent Meyniel.
Short abstract:
The study of the functional organization of brain regions deprived of their preferred sensory inputs (eg. the occipital cortex of the blind or the temporal cortex in the deaf) has provided unprecedented new insights into the enduring "nature versus nurture" debate on the mind/brain development. The observation that temporal regions in the deaf or occipital regions in the blind extend their response to inputs from the remaining senses highlights the role experience plays in shaping the sensory-tuning of brain regions (Nurture). However, the fact that this crossmodal plasticity follows organizational principles similar to the ones observed in the hearing or sighted brain highlights that intrinsic forces impact the development of the functional organization of the brain (Nature). In the talk, I will rely on the most recent data collected in our lab to suggest that crossmodal plasticity recycles the intrinsic multisensory scaffolding of functional brain networks.