[bookshare-discuss] Fwd: Fw: If a blind person gained sight,could they recognize objects previously touched?
- From: Cindy <popularplace@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Louise <bookscanner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2006 19:27:54 -0700 (PDT)
I found this a fascinating article. Is this something
those of you who are blind already know or feel, or is
it interesting to you, too?
Cindy
--- Louise <bookscanner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> From: "Louise" <bookscanner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: "Louise Gourdoux" <bookscanner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Fw: If a blind person gained sight,could
> they recognize objects previously touched?
> Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2006 21:17:15 -0500
>
>
>
> PhysOrg.com
> Thursday, April 20, 2006
>
> If a blind person gained sight, could they recognize
> objects previously
> touched?
>
> By Source: Research/Penn State, By Joe Anuta
>
> Most people conceptualize the world largely based on
> sight, and would find
> it difficult to function using touch alone. Think
> about finding the keyhole
> on your car door at night, or locating that light
> switch in a dark room.
> Even if it's too dark to see, a seeing person uses
> his or her visual memory,
> along with the tactile sense, to navigate the
> physical world and accomplish
> the task at hand.
>
> However, the interconnectedness of sight and touch
> is not a given for the
> blind.
>
> Cathleen Moore, associate professor of psychology,
> explains that the areas
> processing visual and tactile information are
> located on the wrinkly,
> outermost shell of the brain, called the
> neurocortex. "Sight is located on
> the back of the brain, and touch along the sides,
> near the top."
>
> A connection was verified between the two senses in
> sighted people, Moore
> says, through a test using functional Magnetic
> Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to
> analyze brain activity. Without looking, the
> subjects described objects they
> could only examine with their hands. "Despite being
> blindfolded, their
> visual areas were very active. It's as if they
> translated tactile sensations
> into visual terms," states Moore. "Obviously, these
> are integrated."
>
> But although sighted people can picture tactile
> information in their head,
> the neurocortex is configured slightly differently
> for those who can't see.
>
> "It's not like the visual area just atrophies for
> blind people," explains
> Moore. Instead, the visual area gets taken over by
> the tactile. This concept
> is called neuroplasticity, the ability of the
> neurosystem to reconfigure
> itself.
>
> Because of this different brain configuration, blind
> people who regain their
> sight may find themselves in a world they don't
> immediately comprehend. "It
> would be more like a sighted person trying to rely
> on tactile information,"
> Moore says.
>
> Learning to see is a developmental process, just
> like learning language, she
> continues. "As far as vision goes, a
> three-and-a-half year old child is
> already a well-calibrated system."
>
> As an example of the process, she referenced two
> case studies where blind
> men regained their sight later in life. Their
> experiences illustrate some of
> the difficulties in making the transition from
> blindness to the world of
> visual imagery, as well as the surprising importance
> of one's age at the
> onset of blindness to one's successful adaptation to
> sight.
>
> One man known as S.B., in a study conducted by
> British neuropsychologist
> Richard Gregory and reported in the journal Nature,
> lost his sight at 10
> months old, only to regain it 50 years later through
> cornea transplants. He
> could recognize several objects despite never having
> seen them, but other
> aspects of vision left him bewildered, Moore says.
>
> S.B. could tell time from the hands of a clock from
> previously feeling an
> open-faced watch, and identify cars and trucks from
> having repeatedly washed
> his relative's car.
>
> "I would infer that he just formed a generally
> applicable spatial
> representation of these, so conceptualizing the
> position of hands on a clock
> or the shape of a car didn't matter if it came
> through visual or tactile
> sources," Moore says. "When he gained vision, it was
> easier for him to
> interpret them."
>
> "What he wasn't good at was drawings. He basically
> couldn't extract depth
> from them," she adds. For S.B., a painting of a
> countryside landscape was
> simply a collage of colors and a drawing of a cube
> simply a series of lines
> on a page. Gregory's study tentatively attributed
> this problem to a part of
> the brain inappropriately scaling objects, causing
> S.B. to misjudge their
> size.
>
> The other man, American Michael May, whose case was
> reported by CBS News in
> 2003, went blind at 3 1/2 and regained sight at 43.
> Surprisingly, although
> losing sight much later in his childhood, he had a
> harder time adjusting to
> vision than S.B. "He can't recognize the faces of
> his wife and children,"
> Moore says. "One possible explanation for this is
> that while May was blind,
> he was essentially trying to compare tactile
> sensations to visual images he
> obtained as a child, instead of forming a general
> spatial representation
> like S.B., who could only recall the colors red,
> black, and white.
>
> So while we might think giving sight to the blind
> would be akin to taking
> off a blindfold, it is not that simple. The
> acquisition of sight for S.B.
> and May brought hardship along with opportunity.
> "After surgery, some people
> who regain their sight can become very depressed,"
> Moore states. "For S.B.,
> he expected the visual world to hold all of this
> promise, but it didn't. It
> was dull, and bland." S.B. never learned to read,
> and sometimes wouldn't
> bother flipping on the light at night.
>
> Although S.B. died two years after his surgery, May
> has since gotten better
> at understanding his vision, confirms Moore. "He is
> learning to see like an
> adult learns a second language, slowly and through a
> lot of hard conscious
> work. It's very unlike the way a child learns a
> language -- quickly and
> seemingly effortlessly. The intriguing difference
> between S.B.'s and May's
> cases implies that there are critical periods for
> learning to see, just as
> there are heightened periods for language learning."
>
>
> http://www.physorg.com/news64769651.html
>
>
>
>
>
>
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