AI Article Synopsis

  • Blind individuals often experience heightened sensory abilities, including improved hearing and tactile skills, as well as better perception of their own heartbeat, indicating enhanced interoceptive accuracy.
  • Recent research suggests that structural changes in the occipital cortex, such as increased cortical thickness, may contribute to these enhancements in sensory perception among congenitally blind individuals.
  • A study found a significant positive correlation between the ability to count heartbeats and cortical thickness in blind participants, linking these structural changes to their superior heartbeat perception.

Article Abstract

Blindness is associated with heightened sensory abilities, such as improved hearing and tactile acuity. Moreover, recent evidence suggests that blind individuals are better than sighted individuals at perceiving their own heartbeat, suggesting enhanced interoceptive accuracy. Structural changes in the occipital cortex have been hypothesized as the basis of these behavioral enhancements. Indeed, several studies have shown that congenitally blind individuals have increased cortical thickness within occipital areas compared to sighted individuals, but how these structural differences relate to behavioral enhancements is unclear. This study investigated the relationship between cardiac interoceptive accuracy and cortical thickness in 23 congenitally blind individuals and 23 matched sighted controls. Our results show a significant positive correlation between performance in a heartbeat counting task and cortical thickness only in the blind group, indicating a connection between structural changes in occipital areas and blind individuals' enhanced ability to perceive heartbeats.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11329624PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhae324DOI Listing

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