Visual attention to the periphery is enhanced in congenitally deaf individuals

We compared normally hearing individuals and congenitally deaf individuals as they monitored moving stimuli either in the periphery or in the center o f the visual field. When participants monitored the peripheral visual field , greater recruitment (as measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging ) of the motion-selective area MT/MST was observed in deaf than in hearing individuals, whereas the two groups were comparable when attending to the c entral visual field. This finding indicates an enhancement of visual attent ion to peripheral visual space in deaf individuals. Structural equation mod eling was used to further characterize the nature of this plastic change in the deaf. The effective connectivity between MT/MST and the posterior pari etal cortex was stronger in deaf than in hearing individuals during periphe ral but not central attention. Thus, enhanced peripheral attention to movin g stimuli in the deaf may be mediated by alterations of the connectivity be tween MT/MST and the parietal cortex, one of the primary centers for spatia l representation and attention.