Task-specific reorganization of the auditory cortex in deaf humans

Significance What principles govern large-scale reorganization of the brain? In the blind, several visual regions preserve their task specificity but switch to tactile or auditory input. It remains open whether this type of reorganization is unique to the visual cortex or is a general mechanism in the brain. Here we asked deaf and hearing adults to discriminate between temporally complex sequences of stimuli during an fMRI experiment. We show that the same auditory regions were activated when deaf subjects performed the visual version of the task and when hearing subjects performed the auditory version of the task. Thus, switching sensory input while preserving the task specificity of recruited areas might be a general principle that guides cortical reorganization in the brain.