Previous studies have shown that the lack of auditory and early language experiences in congenitally deaf individuals shapes their brain organization. However, the ways in which different types of deprivation reconfigure functional organization remain unclear. Our findings reveal distinct patterns of brain activation and reorganization in response to auditory deprivation (AD) and early language deprivation (ELD). Task-evoked activation showed that AD resulted in alteration of sensory region activation, such as greater activation in visual cortex but less activation in auditory cortex, while ELD did not result in significant differences. Resting-state functional gradient analysis identified ten intrinsic functional dimensions, revealing that AD predominantly affects subdominant dimensions in sensory and motor networks, while ELD primarily influenced dominant dimensions associated with modality differentiation in the default mode network (DMN). Reconstructing task-evoked activation based on these gradients further highlights the differential effects of these two deprivations on functional dimensions. These results provide new insights into how sensory and language deprivation affect brain reorganization, showing that sensory experience influences fine-grained functional specialization (sound or motor functional dimension), while early language experience impacts the macroscale framework of brain modality differentiation. An integrative neuroimaging and modelling framework dissociates critical-period language experience from sensory deprivation in congenital deafness, identifying gradient signatures of experiential brain plasticity.
Liu et al. (Mon,) studied this question.