It has been shown that the reorganized occipital cortex of early blind subjects (EBS) was recruited during spatial and non-spatial processing of sounds and tactile stimuli. However, little is known about how this cortex is functionally organized in EBS. Using fMRI in twelve EBS and twelve matched sighted control subjects (SCS), we compared the pattern of activation elicited by the detection, the identification and the localization of sounds and vibro-tactile stimuli in the same subjects. Results showed an opposite pattern of activation/deactivation in the middle occipital gyrus (MOG, BA37) during the auditory and tactile conditions, i.e. activation in EBS and deactivation in SCS. Contrasts between the auditory and the tactile modality and the different tasks in EBS did not reveal any double dissociation between the modalities nor the tasks in the occipital cortex. However, the MOG and the lingual gyrus (LG, BA18) were recruited to a different extent according to the task: the localization conditions generated the highest bold signal whereas the detection conditions produced the lowest bold signal in these regions. The pattern of activation/deactivation suggests that visual deprivation leads to a reattribution of function of the occipital cortex, but that the connections between this cortex and the auditory and somatosensory cortices already exist in SCS. The task-dependent modulation suggests a functional specialization of the occipital cortex to support the functions that represent a high ecological and practical value for EBS. This leads us to hypothesize that environmental constraints and EBS's daily life experience determine the functional organization visually deprived areas.