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Quantifying And Comparing The Pattern Of Thalamic And Cortical Projections To The Posterior Auditory Field In Hearing And Deaf Cats., Blake E Butler, Nicole Chabot, Stephen G Lomber

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

Following sensory loss, compensatory crossmodal reorganization occurs such that the remaining modalities are functionally enhanced. For example, behavioral evidence suggests that peripheral visual localization is better in deaf than in normal hearing animals, and that this enhancement is mediated by recruitment of the posterior auditory field (PAF), an area that is typically involved in localization of sounds in normal hearing animals. To characterize the anatomical changes that underlie this phenomenon, we identified the thalamic and cortical projections to the PAF in hearing cats and those with early- and late-onset deafness. The retrograde tracer biotinylated dextran amine was deposited in the …