Atypical functional connectome hierarchy in early-blind adolescents

Motivation: Blind people are a good biological model for studying brain plasticity. Goal(s): e examined the brain reorganization of the macroscale hierarchy in early-blind adolescents (EBA) compared with normal-sighted controls (NSC). Approach: Twenty EBA and 20 age-and sex-matched NSC were included. We calculated the vertex-wise functional connectomes of each individual and compared the top 2 gradient scores between the EBA and NSC groups. Results: The comparison between groups revealed increases in the first two gradients in the visual, sensorimotor, control, and default-mode networks in EBA. Impact: The macroscale integration and segregation in unimodal and transmodal network is converged and strengthened in EBA relative to NSC.