• Repetition Suppression for Mir...

*Result*: Repetition Suppression for Mirror Images of Objects and Not Braille Letters in the Ventral Visual Stream of Congenitally Blind Individuals.

Title:
Repetition Suppression for Mirror Images of Objects and Not Braille Letters in the Ventral Visual Stream of Congenitally Blind Individuals.
Authors:
Korczyk M; Department of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Kraków 30-060, Poland maksym.korczyk@gmail.com m.szwed@uj.edu.pl., Rączy K; Institute of Psychology, University of Hamburg, Hamburg 20146, Germany., Szwed M; Department of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Kraków 30-060, Poland maksym.korczyk@gmail.com m.szwed@uj.edu.pl.
Source:
ENeuro [eNeuro] 2026 Jan 22; Vol. 13 (1). Date of Electronic Publication: 2026 Jan 22 (Print Publication: 2026).
Publication Type:
Journal Article
Language:
English
Journal Info:
Publisher: Society for Neuroscience Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 101647362 Publication Model: Electronic-Print Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 2373-2822 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 23732822 NLM ISO Abbreviation: eNeuro Subsets: MEDLINE
Imprint Name(s):
Original Publication: [Washington, DC] : Society for Neuroscience, [2014]-
MeSH Terms:
Blindness*/physiopathology , Blindness*/congenital , Blindness*/diagnostic imaging , Pattern Recognition, Visual*/physiology , Occipital Lobe*/diagnostic imaging , Occipital Lobe*/physiopathology , Visual Perception*/physiology, Humans ; Female ; Male ; Adult ; Magnetic Resonance Imaging ; Young Adult ; Middle Aged ; Brain Mapping ; Parietal Lobe/diagnostic imaging ; Parietal Lobe/physiopathology ; Reading ; Sensory Aids
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Contributed Indexing:
Keywords: Braille; breaking mirror invariance; congenitally blind individuals; mirror invariance; reading; shape recognition
Entry Date(s):
Date Created: 20251209 Date Completed: 20260122 Latest Revision: 20260128
Update Code:
20260130
PubMed Central ID:
PMC12834325
DOI:
10.1523/ENEURO.0002-25.2025
PMID:
41365683
Database:
MEDLINE

*Further Information*

*Mirror invariance is the cognitive tendency to perceive mirror-image objects as identical. Mirrored letters, however, are distinct orthographic units and must be identified as different despite having the same shape. Consistent with this phenomenon, a small, localized region in the ventral visual stream, the Visual Word Form Area (VWFA), exhibits repetition suppression to both identical and mirror pairs of objects but only to identical, not mirror, pairs of letters ( Pegado et al., 2011), a phenomenon named mirror invariance "breaking". The ability of congenitally blind individuals to "break" mirror invariance for pairs of mirrored Braille letters has been demonstrated behaviorally ( de Heering et al., 2018, Korczyk et al., 2024). However, its neural underpinnings have not yet been investigated. Here, in an fMRI repetition suppression paradigm, congenitally blind individuals (8 males and 10 females) recognized pairs of everyday objects and Braille letters in identical ("p" and "p"), mirror ("p" and "q"), and different ("p" and "z") orientations. We found repetition suppression for identical and mirror pairs of everyday objects in the parietal and ventral-lateral occipital cortex, indicating that mirror-invariant object recognition engages the ventral visual stream in tactile modality as well. However, repetition suppression for identical but not mirrored pairs of Braille letters was found not in the VWFA, but in broad areas of the left parietal cortex and the lateral occipital cortex. These results suggest that reading-related orthographic processes in blind individuals depend on different neural computations than those of the sighted.
(Copyright © 2026 Korczyk et al.)*

*The auhors declare no competing financial interests.*