Cape Town - 2026 ISMRM-ISMRT Annual Meeting and Exhibition
9 May 2026 – 14 May 2026 · Cape Town, South Africa
665-02-003 ISMRM Abstract

Representations of visual-to-auditory sensory substitution in the visual cortices of early and late blind listeners

Primary: Brain Function and fMRI - Task/Intervention Based fMRI
Secondary: Brain Function and fMRI - fMRI Analysis
665-02-003 · fMRI: Applications in Neurology and Psychiatry II · Thursday, 14 May, 9:25 AM–10:20 AM · Digital Posters Row F
Keywords: Visual cortex Population peceptive field mapping Visual impairment Assistive technology Sensory substitution
Accepted
Giles Hamilton-Fletcher1, Patrick Paszkowski2, Matthew C Murphy3,4, Amy C Nau4,5, Kevin C Chan 6
1Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, New York, United States of America
2SUNY Downstate College of Medicine, New York, United States of America
3Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, United States of America
4Department of Ophthalmology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, United States of America
5Korb and associates, Boston, United States of America
6Department of Ophthalmology, Stanford University, Stanford, United States of America
Presenting Author: Kevin C Chan

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References

1. Meijer, P. B., An experimental system for auditory image representations. IEEE transactions on biomedical engineering, 1992. 39(2): p. 112-121. doi: 10.1109/10.121642. PMID: 1612614. [doi] [pmid]
2. Murphy M.C., et al., Top-down influence on the visual cortex of the blind during sensory substitution. NeuroImage, 2016. 125: p. 932-940. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.11.021. PMID: 26584776. [doi] [pmid]
3. Amedi A., et al., Shape conveyed by visual-to-auditory sensory substitution activates the lateral occipital complex. Nature neuroscience, 2007. 10(6): p. 687-689. doi: 10.1038/nn1912. PMID: 17515898. [doi] [pmid]
4. Striem-Amit E., et al., Reading with sounds: sensory substitution selectively activates the visual word form area in the blind. Neuron, 2012. 76(3): p. 640-652. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2012.08.026. PMID: 23141074. [doi] [pmid]
5. Striem-Amit E., Amedi A., Visual cortex extrastriate body-selective area activation in congenitally blind people “seeing” by using sounds. Current Biology, 2014. 24(6): p. 687-692. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2014.02.010. PMID: 24613309. [doi] [pmid]
6. Hofstetter S., et al., Topographic maps and neural tuning for sensory substitution dimensions learned in adulthood in a congenital blind subject. NeuroImage, 2021. 235: p. 118029. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118029. PMID: 33836269. [doi] [pmid]
7. Hamilton-Fletcher, G., Chan, R. W., Murphy, M. C., Schuman, J. S., Nau, A. C., & Chan, K. C. (2022). Auditory topographic maps in the congenitally blind brain: Effects of NORDIC de-noising and sensory substitution training. In Joint Annual Meeting ISMRM-ESMRMB & ISMRT 31st Annual Meeting.
8. Hamilton-Fletcher, G., Bang, J. W., Parra, C., Chan, R., Murphy, M., & Chan, K. C. (2022). NORDIC de-noising expands brain activation areas while preserving retinotopic organization in functional MRI. Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, 63(7), 237-F0084.
9. Moeller, S., Pisharady, P.K., Ramanna, S., Lenglet, C., Wu, X., Dowdle, L., Yacoub, E., Uğurbil, K. and Akçakaya, M., 2021. NOise reduction with DIstribution Corrected (NORDIC) PCA in dMRI with complex-valued parameter-free locally low-rank processing. Neuroimage, 226, p.117539. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117539. PMID: 33186723. [doi] [pmid]
10. Vizioli L., et al., Lowering the thermal noise barrier in functional brain mapping with magnetic resonance imaging. Nature communications, 2021. 12(1): p. 1-5. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-25431-8. PMID: 34462435. [doi] [pmid]
11. Chan, R. W., Hamilton-Fletcher, G., Edelman, B. J., Faiq, M. A., Sajitha, T. A., Moeller, S., & Chan, K. C. (2024). NOise Reduction with DIstribution Corrected (NORDIC) principal component analysis improves brain activity detection across rodent and human functional MRI contexts. Imaging Neuroscience, 2, 1-18. doi: 10.1162/imag_a_00325. PMID: 39463889. [doi] [pmid]

Cite this abstract

http://echo.ismrm.org/p/ISMRM2026/665-02-003