It is easy to assume that if a person is born blind, then they will never be able to ‘see’ but scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and in France have shown that by using specially created sound and photographic equipment; blind people can ‘see’ with sound.
When I ask people: ‘so where do you think visual information is processed in the Brain?’ I often get told by people that it stands to reason it must be located somewhere near the eyes, and they point towards their forehead. You couldn’t get further from the truth. The visual information obtained through the retina in our eyes projects back through some pretty cool brain structures before reaching its intended destination – right at the back of the head (see the photo for a quick look). This first sensory processing area of visual information is called ‘Primary Visual Cortex’ and is located in the Calcarine Fissure of the Occipital lobe.
Now, people who are born congenitally blind (from birth), are not stimulating this visual area of the brain from early infant-hood Common wisdom would suggest that if it is never stimulated then it can never be used for its primary functional purpose: to allow us to ‘see’. However, the team of researchers previously described, have stimulated visual brain areas (there are more than one) by creating soundscapes (images converted into a ‘sound’ via an algorithm) in order to help blind people interpret visual information. This allows blind people to convert and decode the sounds into visual information and for all intents and purposes, to perceive and ‘see’ complex visual images of people, objects and words. Pretty cool huh? I will be using the image below in the coming weeks to explain some other concepts, so memorize it! 😉
Ella Striem-Amit, Laurent Cohen, Stanislas Dehaene, Amir Amedi. (2012). Reading with Sounds: Sensory Substitution Selectively Activates the Visual Word Form Area in the Blind. Neuron 76 (3): 640