In people who are born blind, their primary visual cortex which is the brain’s region that processes visual information develops unique patterns different from those in people with sight, said researchers. They added that these patterns are similar to that of an “individual fingerprint.” The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The researchers said that the connectivity in the visual cortices of people who can see did not show such varied changes and were “usually fairly consistent.”

Ella Striem-Amit, an assistant professor of neuroscience at the Georgetown University, US and lead author of the study said, “The connectivity pattern in people born blind is more different across people, like an individual fingerprint, and is stable over time -- so much so that the individual person can be identified from the connectivity pattern.”

For the study, the team included a small sample of people born blind, who underwent repeated functional MRI scans for over two years. Upon analysing the scans, the researchers found the unique connectivity patterns showed “remarkable stability” over time.

Lenia Amaral, a postdoctoral researcher at the Georgetown University said, “Our study found that these patterns did not change significantly based on the task at hand -- whether participants were localising sounds, identifying shapes, or simply resting. Instead, the connectivity patterns were unique to each individual and remained stable over the two-year study period.”

The authors of the study say that the findings of the study suggest that life experiences shape the different ways in which one’s brain develops, especially if one grew up without being able to see. Striem-Amit said, “Brain plasticity in these cases frees the brain to develop, possibly even for different possible uses for the visual cortex, among different people born blind.”

Brain plasticity, also known as neuroplasticity, is the brain’s ability to change and adapt due to experience. It is a term which is used to refer to the brain’s ability to change, reorganize or grow neural networks. This can involve functional changes due to brain damage or structural changes due to learning.

Verywell Mind says plasticity refers to the brain’s malleability or ability to change; it does not imply that the brain is plastic. Neuro refers to neurons, the nerve cells that are the building blocks of the brain and nervous system. Thus, neuroplasticity allows nerve cells to change or adjust.

There are two different types of neuroplasticity, functional plasticity and structural plasticity.

Functional plasticity is the brain’s ability to move functions from a damaged area of the brain to other undamaged areas. On the other hand, Structural plasticity is the brain’s ability to actually change its physical structure as a result of learning.