Region-specific auditory and visual plasticity in mouse visual cortex after early visual deprivation

Lateral dorsal stream areas in mouse visual cortex show increased auditory response strength after early visual deprivation, alongside decreased visual drive across multiple visual metrics.

• Why it matters: Early visual deprivation produces lasting cross-modal changes, but it is unclear how auditory and visual inputs are reorganized region-specifically at single-neuron resolution.
• What they did: Awake mice were reared in darkness from birth and exposed to light in adulthood; two-photon calcium imaging mapped single-neuron auditory and visual responsiveness in V1 and HVAs resembling ventral and dorsal streams.
• The result: Lateral dorsal stream areas exhibited stronger auditory responses even after accounting for tone-induced whisker movement, while visual drive decreased in recruited neurons, response strength, orientation decoding accuracy, and neural manifold size.