Visual representations of peculiar alphabets: Braille teachers and related expertise

This research project proposes to clarify the complex organization of those areas organized in terms of the category a visual stimulus belongs to (i.e. faces, bodies, and visual word forms) by investigating the changes at the neural level when individuals develop expertise in using uncommon stimuli for a a specific purpose (such as body moevemnts in sign languafge experts and simple dot patterns in experts in visual Braille reading). These experiments will significantly advance our understanding of the determinants of the functional organization of the human visual cortex.