Dissociating cognitive and sensory neural plasticity in human superior temporal cortex

Disentangling the effects of sensory and cognitive factors on neural reorganization is fundamental for establishing the relationship between plasticity and functional specialization. Auditory deprivation in humans provides a unique insight into this problem, because the origin of the anatomical and functional changes observed in deaf individuals is not only sensory, but also cognitive, owing to the implementation of visual communication strategies such as sign language and speechreading. Here, we describe a functional magnetic resonance imaging study of individuals with different auditory deprivation and sign language experience. We find that sensory and cognitive experience cause plasticity in anatomically and functionally distinguishable substrates. This suggests that after plastic reorganization, cortical regions adapt to process a different type of input signal, but preserve the nature of the computation they perform, both at a sensory and cognitive level.