Figure 4.

Consequences of visual and auditory deprivation. Summary of the behavioral and neural results of the reported studies addressing visual and auditory deprivation. The major findings for spatial, temporal, and movement processing are depicted separately, and the hypotheses listed in Figure 1 are referenced. In blind individuals, (a) improvements/impairments in spatial auditory processing abilities and (b) improvements/impairments in temporal auditory processing abilities are observed. In deaf individuals, (c) improvements/impairments in spatial visual processing abilities and (d) improvements/impairments in temporal visual processing abilities are observed. The hatched areas illustrate the possible nature of the improvement (temporal/spatial). However, the alterations reported in behavioral studies might not only result from cross-modal plasticity but also intracortical changes and alterations within the sensory organs. The respective studies are reported in the main text, and a detailed overview is provided in Supplementary .