Importance of the retrosplenial/posterior cingulate cortices in blind soccer players
Poster No:
790
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Tomoyo Morita1, Eiichi Naito1
Institutions:
1National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Suita, Osaka
First Author:
Co-Author:
Introduction:
Spatial navigation is a crucial brain function that occurs when an individual moves from one location to another. This function normally relies on vision, and the retrosplenial/posterior cingulate cortices (RSC/PCC) and parahippocampal cortex (PHC) play crucial roles (Cona et al., 2019; Li et al., 2021). However, an extraordinary adaptation can be observed in blind soccer players, where the human brain can perform spatial navigation without vision. Therefore, this study tested the possible increase in gray matter (GM) volume in the RSC/PCC and PHC in the brains of a world's top blind soccer player and other blind soccer players.
Methods:
Six blind soccer players (BS group; 31.3 ± 6.0 years, including the world's top player) and eight blind non-soccer players (BNS group; 33.3 ± 7.7 years) participated in this study. This study protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology and the MRI Safety Committee of the Center for Information and Neural Networks (CiNet; no. 2003260010). We explained the details of the present study to all participants before the experiment, and they then provided written informed consent. In cases where the visually impaired participants could not provide their signatures, we obtained their oral informed consent and written informed consent signed by an experimenter or their guardians in their presence. The study was conducted according to the principles and guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki (1975). For each participant, a T1-weighted magnetization-prepared rapid gradient echo (MP-RAGE) image was acquired using a 3.0-Tesla MRI scanner (Trio Tim; SIEMENS, Germany). We conducted voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analysis to examine the change in GM volume in each visually impaired participant compared with that in 250 sighted participants (24.1 ± 5.4 years, range: 21–54 years, all of whom had never played blind soccer). For this comparison, a two-sample non-parametric permutation test was performed using the Statistical non-Parametric Mapping toolbox. Age, handedness scores, and total brain volume were entered into the design matrix as covariates of no interest to minimize the impact of these variables on the results. Since we had structural hypotheses for the RSC/PCC and PHC, we conducted a region-of-interest (ROI) analysis. We prepared an ROI for each of the left and right RSC/PCC and PHC based on a previous study showing meta-analysis results on spatial navigation (Cona et al., 2019). Within each ROI, we searched for significant clusters that showed the increase in GM volume in each visually impaired participant.
Results:
Compared with the sighted participants, the world's top blind soccer player (BS1) had a significant increase in GM volume in the bilateral RSC/PCC. Two of the other five participants of BS group (BS4, BS5) also showed an increase in the left RSC/PCC (Figure 1). However, such an increase in GM volume was not observed in the participants of NBS group. Eventually, the probability of significant clusters within the RSC/PCC ROIs was significantly higher in the BS group (4/12) than that in the BNS group (0/16) (p = 0.02). In contrast, only one blind soccer player (not the top player) showed a significant increase in the PHC, and no between-group difference was observed in the probability of a significant increase in the PHC.
Conclusions:
This study revealed that the volume of the RSC/PCC is significantly increased in the top blind soccer player and also in other blind soccer players. This finding suggests that the RSC/PCC is involved in spatial navigation without vision. This study, unveiling the characteristics of the brains of the world's top blind soccer player and of other blind soccer players, for the first time demonstrates that blind soccer training, which requires spatial navigation based on non-visual cues, may cause volume increase of the human RSC/PCC.
Higher Cognitive Functions:
Space, Time and Number Coding 1
Neuroanatomy, Physiology, Metabolism and Neurotransmission:
Cortical Anatomy and Brain Mapping 2
Novel Imaging Acquisition Methods:
Anatomical MRI
Keywords:
MRI
Vision
Other - Blind soccer; Spatial navigation; Retrosplenial cortex
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
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Provide references using APA citation style.
Li, J et al. (2021). Human spatial navigation: neural representations of spatial scales and reference frames obtained from an ALE meta-analysis. Neuroimage, 238, 118264.