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Early-onset blindness leads to reorganization in visual cortex connectivity and function. However, this has mostly been studied at the group-level, largely ignoring differences in brain reorganization across early blind individuals. In this talk, I will present resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) in a large cohort of blind individuals that shows that reorganization is not ubiquitous, highlighting the important role for sensory experience during development for driving individual differences. Importantly, this variability is linked to life experiences: longer formal education duration correlated with higher connectivity of the primary visual cortex (V1) and the left frontal cortex, suggesting its role in visual cortex cognitive takeover. Building on these findings, our more recent work explored if variability in reorganization in the early blind may affect the capacity to benefit from sight-restoring treatment. I will present longitudinal data …