Abstract Early blind individuals show superior performance across a wide variety of auditory skills. However, fMRI studies examining neural plasticity resulting from blindness have almost exclusively focused on techniques that pool information across voxels. As a result, while studies have shown that differences in neural activity between early blind and sighted subjects are correlated with behavioral performance, justifications for these correlations remain at the `more cortex is better' or the `bigger BOLD (or sometimes smaller) responses are better' level of explanation. We will examine the widespread alterations that occur within auditory processing pathways within early blind individuals using `voxel‐wise encoding' models that represent each voxel as having a tuning function along dimension(s) of interest. Simple linking models will allow us to predict behavioral performance based on the predicted cortical discriminability of stimuli. This will allow us, for the first time, to model quantitatively how neural responses to auditory stimuli might mediate the enhanced behavioral abilities observed in early blind individuals. In Aim 1 we will examine whether early blindness alters primary auditory cortex (PAC). We will begin by comparing PAC size, responsiveness and frequency tuning bandwidths across early blind and sighted individuals. We will then examine whether tuning for temporal amplitude modulations within primary auditory cortex are also affected by blindness. Computational models will be used to link primary auditory cortex neural responses to behavioral performance across a variety of auditory tasks for blind and sighted individuals. In Aim 2 we will use naturalistic stimuli to measure complex auditory spectro‐temporal tuning in both auditory and occipital cortex. Again, computational models will be used to link each individual's neural responses to auditory performance on complex naturalistic tasks. Finally in Aim 3 we will examine auditory motion processing. Although auditory motion responses are found within visual cortical area hMT+ in early blind individuals, it is not clear how these responses help early blind subjects to perceptually segregate moving auditory objects in complex auditory environments. We will examine whether hMT+ is tuned for frequency as well as direction of motion and how hMT+ neural responses might result in enhanced behavioral performance on auditory motion tasks.