[bksvol-discuss] OT: Fwd: Fw: Blind sight
- From: Cindy <popularplace@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 18 May 2006 10:57:46 -0700 (PDT)
This article relates, subject-wise, to one that I
forwarded a while back--vision being given to a man
who was blind fo forty years, having lost his sight at
age three.
The article mentions dreams. I've wondered, but have
refrained from asking, what the dreams of blind people
are like. Does the brain create pictures and shapes
from the various sensations you have during the day? I
hope you don't mind my asking.
Cindy
--- Louise <bookscanner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> From: "Louise" <bookscanner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: "Louise Gourdoux" <bookscanner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Fw: Blind sight
> Date: Thu, 18 May 2006 08:05:00 -0500
>
>
>
> The Guardian (UK)
> Wednesday, May 17, 2006
>
> Blind sight
>
> By Sue Blackmore
>
> Restoring vision to the blind sounds like a miracle
> - but for the patients
> in question, it can seem like a nightmare.
>
> What is it like for the blind to see again? You
> might think it would be a
> delight, with the previously handicapped person
> opening their eyes to a
> wondrous world of colour, depth, movement and faces,
> and a new and better
> life. But that (if you are a normal seeing person)
> is probably because you
> think of vision as an easy task for the brain -
> after all, it seems so easy.
>
> This is far from the truth. In fact, vision takes
> vast brain power and a lot
> of it is learned, so the newly-sighted have a tough
> job on. And the few
> previously documented cases are mostly sad stories
> of fear, depression, and
> even suicide.
>
> This week I was lucky enough to be invited, along
> with a small group of
> vision scientists, to meet a blind man made to see -
> this time by the
> wonders of corneal stem cell transplantation. Mike
> May, a Californian who
> became blind at the age of three, had his sight
> restored in one eye over
> forty years later. One of the organisers was Richard
> Gregory, who did
> classic research in the 1960s with patient, SB.
>
> Our questions ranged from dreams and imagination to
> how to cope with traffic
> and sports, but among the most fascinating things we
> learned was how
> overwhelming the visual world is for someone who is
> not used to it, and how
> much sighted people take for granted their ability
> to ignore it. For Mike,
> looking out of his high up hotel window means seeing
> the teeming cars as
> full size cars, while knowing that somehow he ought
> to see them as smaller.
> He described the difference from his previous world
> in which he knew the
> cars were there but was not bombarded with details
> of colour, shape, number,
> and direction.
>
> Amazingly, Mike was an expert skier while blind,
> following a guide who
> called out instructions. He described to us the joy
> of seeing mountains
> (when he could work out that was what he was seeing)
> and the confusion of
> skiing with sight. Trees were dark and obviously to
> be avoided, but shadows
> were dark too, and hence very scary. It made me
> reflect on how valuable is
> our ability not to be distracted by shadows. Indeed
> he finds skiing and
> crossing the road more frightening with vision than
> he used to do without.
>
> He talked about synaesthesia too. While many people
> see numbers or sounds as
> having their own colour, for Mike it was Braille
> letters that were
> coloured - and, as he put it "people thought I was
> nuts". Most strange for
> him are faces which seem to have so much more detail
> than he had expected
> from touching them all his life - but whether he
> sees and recognises them in
> anything like the way normally sighted people do, we
> could not tell.
>
> I realised how very difficult it is to ask
> meaningful questions and
> understand the answers when you are talking to
> someone whose experience is
> so different from your own - and this is, of course,
> what makes Mike so
> special. But should I go further? Perhaps I should
> not be asking what it's
> like for the blind to see, but what it's like for
> anyone to see. For
> scientists are far from agreement over this, and I
> have agonised about the
> nature of conscious vision for years.
>
> So look around you now. What is it like to see?
>
>
>
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/sue_blackmore/2006/05/what_is_it_like_fo
> r_the_blind.html
>
>
>
>
>
> --
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> Release Date: 5/17/2006
>
>
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