Impact of a transient neonatal visual deprivation on the development of the ventral occipito-temporal cortex in humans

Abstract How does experience shape the development of visual brain regions? We demonstrate that a transient period of visual deprivation early in life in humans leads to permanent alteration in the function of the early visual cortex (EVC), while leaving the categorical coding of downstream ventral occipito-temporal cortex (VOTC) mostly unaffected. We used fMRI to characterize the brain response to five categories (faces, bodies, objects, buildings and words) in a rare group of cataract-reversal individuals who experienced a transient period of blindness early in life, and in matched participants with typical visual development. We show that the encoding of low-level visual properties is impaired in EVC in cataract-reversal participants, while the categorical response in the VOTC is preserved. When altering the visual properties of our stimuli to mimic in controls the deficit of EVC response of the cataract, we observe a cascading alteration of the categorical coding from EVC to VOTC that is not observed in the cataract-reversal group. Our results show that a typical visual categorical organization develops in VOTC despite a period of visual deprivation early in life and in the presence of impaired processing in EVC. A deep neural network exposed to a visual diet that emulates the experience of our participants reproduced our brain observations within an artificial system. These findings emphasize how specific visual regions are differently affected by a period of visual deprivation early in life, with information encoded in EVC being permanently affected, while the categorical coding in VOTC shows resilience to deprivation.