[bksvol-discuss] Re: Fwd: Fw: If a blind person gained sight, could they recognize objects previously touched?

  • From: "Kaitlyn" <kaitlyn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2006 11:53:02 -0700

Hi, 

I haven't heard it put in this way but I can see how it could be true. I
read a book which dealt with types of blindness and they said the critical
year was about 7. Before that age visual memories weren't as great as
afterward. 

I had sight until 7 and a half and I still can visualize pictures in three-D
but I wonder how it would be if I was to get my sight back. The brain may
have to go through a retraining process to develop the skill again or since
the brain already knows that it would be more of a training of the eyes to
focus. 

Though loosing sight or never having it would seem to be a much longer
period and the question might be with an older person how the brain would
take to pick these skills p  from scratch. It's probably no different than
what my daughter does working with autistic children. She has to break
things down to very simple steps and teach them one at a time. 

Katie Hill
You can learn a lot if you are humble enough to listen.
Lynn Lewis Warren
Email: Kaitlyn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Evan Reese
Sent: Friday, April 21, 2006 7:59 AM
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Fwd: Fw: If a blind person gained sight,could
they recognize objects previously touched? 

I had heard some of this before, but the bit about not being able to extract

depth from paintings or drawings was new.  I can resonate with that, as 
while I know intellectually that sighted people do it, I find it 
incomprehensible that they can get a three-dimensional image from a flat 
picture.  I have asked people about how they do this, but but they either 
couldn't explain how they do it, or their explanations - which I can't 
really recall at the moment - didn't convey anything to me.  Perhaps that's 
why I can't remember them if there were any.  I have felt two-dimensional 
raised-line drawings that were supposed to convey a three-d image, but found

them utterly inscrutable.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Cindy" <popularplace@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>; <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>; 
"Louise" <bookscanner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2006 7:27 PM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Fwd: Fw: If a blind person gained sight,could they

recognize objects previously touched?


>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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>>
>>
>
>
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