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Asked by griffmeg11 to Clare, Mariana, Pedro, Robert, Susanne on 16 Nov 2012. This question was also asked by ninjallamas.
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Susanne Muekusch answered on 16 Nov 2012:
Hi griffmeg,
I think you should study neuroscience…
It has been shown by scanning the brains of blind people, that they actually use the parts of their brain that is used to process vision (the visual cortex). The visual cortex lost its original purpose when people become blind and somehow networks are rearranged that the brain power of the visual cortex is then used for other senses.
The brain is just amazing!
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Mariana Campos answered on 16 Nov 2012:
Not all the people believe that that is true. Some scientists did experiments and cannot see differences in the blind capacity to hear, for instance. But there also experiments that show the opposite. So is not so clear.
There are people that say that blind people learn to echolocation. It means that they can hear the echo on the objects that surround them and know where they are, the same way bats do it. So cool!
I didn’t know this, I am learning as well. This guy just clicks with his mouth, and even if he can’t see he can cycle! 🙂
Just check the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xATIyq3uZM4&feature=relmfu -
Robert Insall answered on 16 Nov 2012:
Hah! Ace question.
I agree with Susanne. All the brain cells that would normally deal with seeing can change purpose and deal with something else. Amazing. -
Clare Taylor answered on 18 Nov 2012:
@susanne is right! Scientists have done research that showed that areas of the brain usually used for vision were activated in blind people who were performing tasks related to hearing and touch, suggesting that something called ‘crossmodal plasticity’ occurs. This is when there is an adaptive change in the neural networks, allowing new neural connections to be formed to parts of the brain that no longer receive sensory input, i.e. the bit that normally receives visual information reroutes to send signals to other parts involved in the other senses! It really is amazing!
And it could happen much more quickly than we think – some researchers did experiments with blindfolded people and compared them. In the experiment, two groups of people were given blindfolds to where and then did a hearing task. After a 90 minute rest with blindfolds on, one group took their blindfolds off while the other group kept them on, and they found that the group that kept the blindfold on did better when they did the hearing test again! They didn’t test what was going on in the brain but they think that it may be because of the crossmodal plasticity that I described above. Of course they will have to do some more experiments to find out but isn’t that astounding to think that the brain could adapt so quickly??
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