Perception auditive et substitution sensorielle chez la personne voyante et non-voyante : approche neuro-éthologique

Poirier, Colline
(2005)

Files

247927_Poirier_These.pdf
  • Restricted Access
  • Adobe PDF
  • 11.38 MB
No access

Details

Authors
  • Poirier, CollineUCLouvain
    author
Supervisors
De Volder, Anne G.
 ;
Veraart, Claude
Abstract
Sensory substitution refers to the use of one sensory modality to supply information normally gathered by another sense. In the case of blindness, visual information can be transmitted through the auditory or tactile channels. An auditory-for-visual substitution prosthesis has been developed in the Neural Rehabilitation Engineering Laboratory. During this PhD, we were interested in both the neural bases of auditory perception and the learning mechanisms of prosthesis use. This PhD work has shown the involvement of the occipital cortex during auditory processing in sighted subjects. It has allowed us to specify the organisation and the functionality of the occipital cortex in blind subjects. This PhD has also allowed us to define the learning mechanisms of prosthesis use. Finally, it has demonstrated the involvement of the visual areas during prosthesis use in blindfolded sighted subjects. All these results led us to suggest a general scheme of the neural mechanisms underlying the sensory substitution phenomenon. On the one hand, the visual mental imagery process seems to induce the recruitment of visual areas during the prosthesis use in sighted subjects. This process would induce a 'visual-like perception'. The contribution of mental imagery seems to increase through learning. On the other hand, auditory processing of stimuli coming from the prosthesis seems to be able to induce the recruitment of visual areas in the blindfolded sighted subjects. Both these mechanisms, mental imagery and auditory processing, may be involved in the recruitment of visual areas previously observed in blind subjects during the prosthesis use.
Affiliations

Citations

  • APA
  • Chicago
  • FWB

Poirier, C. (2005). Perception auditive et substitution sensorielle chez la personne voyante et non-voyante : approche neuro-éthologique. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/110684