ArticleNature communications2018
Neural representation of visual concepts in people born blind.
Article in Nature communications, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed.
- Gestural and Verbal Evidence of Conceptual Representation Differences in Blind and Sighted Individuals.Cognitive science · 2025Article
- Object knowledge representation in the human visual cortex requires a connection with the language system.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Article
- Missing images: autobiographical memory in Aphantasia and blindness.Frontiers in cognition · 2025Review
- Early Production of Imperceptible Words by Infants and Toddlers Born Deaf or Blind.Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science · 2025Article
- Constructing a norm for children's scientific drawing: Distribution features based on semantic similarity of large language models.Biology methods & protocols · 2025Article
- Object color knowledge representation occurs in the macaque brain despite the absence of a developed language system.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- Longitudinal stability of individual brain plasticity patterns in blindness.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Neural specialization for 'visual' concepts emerges in the absence of vision.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Touch to learn: Multisensory input supports word learning and processing.Developmental science · 2024Article
- Longitudinal stability of individual brain plasticity patterns in blindness.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- Similar object shape representation encoded in the inferolateral occipitotemporal cortex of sighted and early blind people.PLoS biology · 2023Article
- Article
- Article
- Visuo-spatial imagery in dreams of congenitally and early blind: a systematic review.Frontiers in integrative neuroscience · 2023Review
- The Role of Visual Experience in Individual Differences of Brain Connectivity.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2022Article
- Shared understanding of color among sighted and blind adults.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Article
- Towards Strong Inference in Research on Embodiment - Possibilities and Limitations of Causal Paradigms.Journal of cognition · 2021Article
- Hemispheric Organization for Visual Object Recognition: A Theoretical Account and Empirical Evidence.Perception · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
How do we represent information without sensory features? How are abstract concepts like "freedom", devoid of external perceptible referents, represented in the brain? Here, to address the role of sensory information in the neural representation of concepts, we used fMRI to investigate how people born blind process concepts whose referents are imperceptible to them because of their visual nature ("rainbow", "red"). Activity for these concepts was compared to that of sensorially-perceptible referents ("rain"), classical abstract concepts ("justice") and concrete concepts ("cup"), providing a gradient between fully concrete and fully abstract concepts in the blind. We find that anterior temporal lobe (ATL) responses track concept perceptibility and objecthood: preference for imperceptible object concepts was found in dorsal ATL, for abstract (non-object, non-referential) concepts in lateral ATL, and for perceptible concepts in medial ATL. These findings point to a new division-of-labor among aspects of ATL in representing conceptual properties that are abstract in different ways.
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