Blindness May Be As Much A Function Of The Brain As Of The Eye

NPR Morning Edition program reports that people who have been blind since childhood may not be able to see so well after sight-restoring surgery as adults. That is because their brains have rewired themselves, so to speak, to accommodate the vision loss.

In the case described by NPR, as a child, one man's "visual cells...devoted to fine detail eventually deteriorated." His blindness in early childhood set off a chain reaction as other parts of [his] brain that also depended on visual information suddenly weren't getting it. As a result, he lost both the ability to recognize faces and to tell different kinds of objects apart.

This case was first studied by Ione Fine, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Washington. The gentleman who was studied Mike May, had been able to see, once upon a time. She wondered, now that he had a good eye, why couldn't his brain pick up where it left off? That's the subject of a paper published earlier this year in the journal Neuron.

Posted in: Blindness, Brain, Psychology, Visual perception