Descrizione del progetto
Comprendere la plasticità cerebrale delle persone non vedenti
Nei non vedenti, la corteccia visiva primaria — da cui in genere dipende l’elaborazione delle informazioni visive — risponde al linguaggio, sollevando interrogativi sulla plasticità cerebrale e sugli aspetti linguistici specifici rappresentati in quest’area. Il progetto BLINDBRAIN, finanziato dal CER, indagherà su due ipotesi che riguardano l’elaborazione del linguaggio nella corteccia visiva primaria. La prima propone che gli effetti linguistici derivino dalle tipiche computazioni visuo-spaziali, ponendo l’accento sulle proprietà concrete del linguaggio. La seconda suggerisce che le risposte siano guidate da rappresentazioni astratte, che consentono di elaborare gli aspetti concettuali del linguaggio. Avvalendosi di tecniche di neuroimaging, il progetto si propone di verificare queste ipotesi e approfondire la nostra comprensione di come le esperienze sensoriali e la genetica plasmino le funzioni cognitive del cervello.
Obiettivo
What makes the cognitive functions to always fall in the same brain niches, in people all around the world? This consistency might be driven by shared experience, characteristic of our species. Alternatively, it might be driven by genetic blueprints, predisposing certain brain areas to process specific types of information.
To tackle this puzzle, I want to understand the functional plasticity of the early visual cortex, genetically predisposed to process vision, in people born blind. We know that, in blind individuals, this brain region responds to language. While this discovery can be groundbreaking for our theories of brain plasticity, its theoretical implications are debated, particularly because we do not know what properties of linguistic stimuli are represented in the blind early visual cortex.
The project objective is to fill this gap in knowledge and disentangle two hypotheses for language processing in the early visual cortex of blind individuals. One hypothesis is that linguistic effects in this region are an extension of its typical visuospatial computations. That implies that this region represents linguistic stimuli through concrete, physical properties of language referents. An alternative possibility is that responses to language in the blind early visual cortex are driven by the development of truly abstract representation in this region. That implies that this region can represent more conceptual properties of language referents or even the linguistic properties of words and expressions themselves.
My project will use advanced neuroimaging approaches, such as “mind reading” from fMRI signals and inducing “virtual lesions” with TMS, to thoroughly test these two hypotheses. By doing so, it will evaluate two fundamentally different perspectives on functional plasticity in the human brain, and will significantly improve our understanding of how sensory experience and genetic blueprints shape the implementation of cognitive functions in this organ.
Parole chiave
Programma(i)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Argomento(i)
Invito a presentare proposte
(si apre in una nuova finestra) ERC-2024-STG
Vedi altri progetti per questo bandoMeccanismo di finanziamento
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsIstituzione ospitante
00-378 Warszawa
Polonia