Practice question · Multiple choice
In people blind from birth, the visual cortex activates during braille reading, and disrupting it impairs their reading. What does that reveal about cortical specialisation?
Hints
- The disruption result is the key. Ask what it adds over merely observing activity.
- If the region were idle, what would interfering with it do to braille reading?
Show the answer
A. That a region's function depends substantially on the input it receives
Why
Activity alone would only show the region is busy; disrupting it and breaking braille reading shows it is doing the work. So cortical tissue is substantially general-purpose, taking its job from its inputs, and it is why early intervention matters so much when a sense is lost, since the territory gets reassigned.
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