Lack of vision shifts occipital dynamics toward a frontal-like regime and enhances top-down connectivity
- 1Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences, University of Milan, Italy
Abstract
The human occipital cortex is robustly repurposed for non-visual cognition after blindness, yet it remains unknown whether this functional reassignment is accompanied by a fundamental retuning of its intrinsic neural dynamics. Here, we recorded the electroencephalographic (EEG) responses to transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) of frontal and occipital areas to causally probe local cortical reactivity and large-scale effective connectivity in 16 blind individuals and 16 sighted controls. Direct perturbation of the occipital cortex revealed a profound shift in its intrinsic operating regime: compared with sighted participants, blind individuals exhibited faster, lower-amplitude TMS-evoked potentials that closely resembled the electrophysiological signature of the frontal cortex, which turned out to be comparable in the two populations. At the network level, source analyses further showed a specific enhancement of frontal-to-occipital effective connectivity, whereas occipital-to-frontal propagation remained unchanged. Importantly, among blind participants, faster occipital dynamics were associated with stronger frontal-driven occipital recruitment, directly linking local temporal retuning to enhanced top-down network influence. Together, these findings indicate that blindness reshapes both the intrinsic dynamics and large-scale integration of the occipital cortex. We propose that successful functional reassignment of the occipital cortex requires not only changes in cortical connectivity but also a tuning of the temporal operating regime toward a faster dynamics, enabling its embedding into distributed cognitive networks and providing a mechanistic framework for the functional reassignment of deafferented cortex.
Related
- Locomotor activity enhances environmental representation by boosting visuo-frontal communication
- 40 Hz visual stimulation increases gamma-band functional connectivity between visual, parietal and frontal regions
- Frontal stimulation reshapes SCAN connectivity and improves motor function in Parkinson's disease
- Ordinal position in auditory sequences is encoded in population dynamics in macaque frontal cortex
- Dynamic belief representation and updating through learned attractor-like dynamics in the frontal cortex
BibTeX
@misc{hassan2026lack,
title = {{Lack of vision shifts occipital dynamics toward a frontal-like regime and enhances top-down connectivity}},
author = {G. Hassan and I. De Cuntis and G. Gaglioti and G. Furregoni and E. Focacci and F. Baglio and D. Bottari and G. Bernardi and A. Calcagno and P. Pietrini and E. Ricciardi and M. Massimini and M. Rosanova and S. Casarotto},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.64898/2026.09.18.752597},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.18.752597v1},
note = {CC BY-NC},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Lack of vision shifts occipital dynamics toward a frontal-like regime and enhances top-down connectivity
AU - G. Hassan
AU - I. De Cuntis
AU - G. Gaglioti
AU - G. Furregoni
AU - E. Focacci
AU - F. Baglio
AU - D. Bottari
AU - G. Bernardi
AU - A. Calcagno
AU - P. Pietrini
AU - E. Ricciardi
AU - M. Massimini
AU - M. Rosanova
AU - S. Casarotto
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/18
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.09.18.752597
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.18.752597v1
AB - The human occipital cortex is robustly repurposed for non-visual cognition after blindness, yet it remains unknown whether this functional reassignment is accompanied by a fundamental retuning of its intrinsic neural dynamics. Here, we recorded the electroencephalographic (EEG) responses to transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) of frontal and occipital areas to causally probe local cortical reactivity and large-scale effective connectivity in 16 blind individuals and 16 sighted controls. Direct perturbation of the occipital cortex revealed a profound shift in its intrinsic operating regime: compared with sighted participants, blind individuals exhibited faster, lower-amplitude TMS-evoked potentials that closely resembled the electrophysiological signature of the frontal cortex, which turned out to be comparable in the two populations. At the network level, source analyses further showed a specific enhancement of frontal-to-occipital effective connectivity, whereas occipital-to-frontal propagation remained unchanged. Importantly, among blind participants, faster occipital dynamics were associated with stronger frontal-driven occipital recruitment, directly linking local temporal retuning to enhanced top-down network influence. Together, these findings indicate that blindness reshapes both the intrinsic dynamics and large-scale integration of the occipital cortex. We propose that successful functional reassignment of the occipital cortex requires not only changes in cortical connectivity but also a tuning of the temporal operating regime toward a faster dynamics, enabling its embedding into distributed cognitive networks and providing a mechanistic framework for the functional reassignment of deafferented cortex.
ER -