Neural and behavioral correlates of drawing in an early blind painter: a case study.
Neural and behavioral correlates of drawing in an early blind painter: a case study.
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DOI：
10.1016/j.brainres.2008.07.088
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发表时间：
2008-11-25
期刊：
影响因子：
2.9
通讯作者：
Pascual-Leone A
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Amedi A;Merabet LB;Camprodon J;Bermpohl F;Fox S;Ronen I;Kim DS;Pascual-Leone A
人类在很大程度上依赖视觉来识别世界上的物体，并可以创建他们遇到的物体的心理表征。对象也可以通过触觉探索来识别和精神上表示。然而，目前还不清楚是否有必要产生这些内部表征先前的视觉经验。主题EA，一个早期的盲人艺术家，提供了对这个问题的见解。像其他盲人一样，EA通过触摸来捕捉外部世界。然而，他也能够通过非常详细的图画来揭示他的内部表达，这些图画是一个有视力的人可以明确理解的。我们采用功能磁共振成像研究与EA的能力，将三维物体转换成图纸，并将这些发现与一系列控制条件（例如，无意义的涂鸦作为感觉运动控制）进行对比。画画时的激活（与涂鸦相比）发生在通常与视觉相关的大脑区域，包括沿着额叶和顶叶皮层区域的纹状皮层。当EA被要求在脑海中想象他必须绘制的图片时，其中一些区域显示出重叠（尽管解剖程度和信号幅度较小）。这些结果具有重要的意义，我们的理解方式，触觉信息可以产生心理表征的形状和场景的情况下，正常的视觉发展。此外，这些发现表明，即使没有先前的视觉经验，枕叶皮层在支持心理表征方面也起着关键作用。
Humans rely heavily on vision to identify objects in the world and can create mental representations of the objects they encounter. Objects can also be identified and mentally represented through haptic exploration. However, it is unclear whether prior visual experience is necessary to generate these internal representations. Subject EA, an early blind artist, provides insight into this question. Like other blind individuals, EA captures the external world by touch. However, he is also able to reveal his internal representations through highly detailed drawings that are unequivocally understandable by a sighted person. We employed fMRI to investigate the neural correlates associated with EA's ability to transform tactilely explored three dimensional objects into drawings and contrasted these findings with a series of control conditions (e.g. nonsensical scribbling as a sensory-motor control). Activation during drawing (compared to scribbling) occurred in brain areas normally associated with vision, including the striate cortex along with frontal and parietal cortical regions. Some of these areas showed overlap when EA was asked to mentally imagine the pictures he had to draw (albeit to a lesser anatomical extent and signal magnitude). These results have important implications as regards our understanding of the ways in which tactile information can generate mental representations of shapes and scenes in the absence of normal visual development. Furthermore, these findings suggest the occipital cortex plays a key role in supporting mental representations even without prior visual experience.