{"id":20988,"date":"2017-07-21T13:00:47","date_gmt":"2017-07-21T19:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/?p=20988"},"modified":"2017-07-21T12:25:32","modified_gmt":"2017-07-21T18:25:32","slug":"this-is-how-the-brain-of-blind-children-reorganizes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/this-is-how-the-brain-of-blind-children-reorganizes\/","title":{"rendered":"This is how the brain of blind children reorganizes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The occipital lobe, the brain part dedicated to vision, can alter its function to engage in tactile or auditory processing if there are not visual stimuli<\/strong>. An international investigation described more precisely how the connections between the different areas are readjusted when one of the senses fails.<\/p>\n

In children with blindness, there is a neuroplastic reorganization involving genes associated with memory and learning, readjusting connections between multisensory brain regions<\/strong>, according to the research carried out by the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) in Spain and Harvard University in the United States.<\/p>\n

The aim of this study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/em> (PNAS), is studying the cerebral plasticity changes that occur in children with loss of vision, paying special attention to the changes in their brain networks and associated genetic bases<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

“Brain plasticity has fascinated many generations of neuroscientists. This work on cases of blindness, especially in children, is a window into the mechanisms that the brain uses to adapt and reorganize itself given adversity or lack of stimuli<\/em>, “says Tom\u00e1s Ortiz, a researcher in the Department of Psychiatry UCM and one of the authors of the article.<\/p>\n

Researchers explain relevant role to the genes involved in this reorganization, most related to memory or learning<\/strong>. This genetic family is expressed significantly in the same areas where blind children increase their brain plasticity<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The work had two fundamental phases. In the first, the researchers recruited a sample of 17 children with blindness \u2014most presented the condition since birth\u2014<\/strong> from schools in the Community of Madrid, with ages ranging from seven to twelve years. All the children underwent brain imaging study<\/strong> at the Radiology Service of Puerta de Hierro University Hospital of Majadahonda (Madrid).<\/p>\n

These images were analyzed in a second phase in the laboratory of brain networks<\/strong> directed by Jorge Sepulcre at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital of Boston.<\/p>\n

“This allowed knowing more precisely how the connections between visual, auditory and tactile areas of the brain are readjusted when one of the senses fails, in our case the sense of vision<\/em>,” Ortiz specifies. The brain network responsible for this dialogue between senses is the network of multisensory integration<\/strong>, recently discovered by Sepulcre.<\/p>\n

In addition, the study is part of the extensive research project on tactile vision directed by Ortiz, which main objective is to develop a prototype tactile stimulation that allows children with visual impairment to recognize environmental stimuli at certain distance by passive touch<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source: <\/strong>SINC<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The occipital lobe, the brain part dedicated to vision, can alter its function to engage in tactile or auditory processing if there are not visual stimuli. An international investigation described more precisely how the connections between the different areas are readjusted when one of the senses fails. In children with blindness, there is a neuroplastic …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":21009,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[15,12],"class_list":["post-20988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-actualidad-en-la-salud","tag-casalud","tag-genomica","cat-3-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20988"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21010,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20988\/revisions\/21010"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}