[blindkid] For the New Year, an article about "Changing Your Mind" that includes blindness examples

[Pat Renfranz]

Fascinating!

I highly recommend Ved Mehta's memoir "Vedi," about his childhood in India.

A vivid early diagnosis memory is of a resident (an ignorant one, at that)
telling us that a third of my newborn's brain, that part typically devoted
to visual processing, would atrophy because there was no visual input.
Studies have clearly since shown that the visual cortex is functionally
active in blind adults when they read Braille--repurposed, as it were.

Pat

On 1/2/11 6:09 AM, "Kim Cunningham" <kim at gulfimagesphoto.com> wrote:

> 


 





New York Times
December 31, 2010
This Year, Change Your Mind
By
> OLIVER SACKS
NEW Year¹s resolutions often have to do with eating more
> healthfully, going to the gym more, giving up sweets, losing weight ‹ all
> admirable goals aimed at improving one¹s physical health. Most people, though,
> do not realize that they can strengthen their brains in a similar way. 
While
> some areas of the brain are hard-wired from birth or early childhood, other
> areas ‹ especially in the cerebral cortex, which is central to higher
> cognitive powers like language and thought, as well as sensory and motor
> functions ‹ can be, to a remarkable extent, rewired as we grow older. In fact,
> the brain has an astonishing ability to rebound from damage ‹ even from
> something as devastating as the loss of sight or hearing. As a physician who
> treats patients with neurological conditions, I see this happen all the time.
> 
For example, one patient of mine who had been deafened by scarlet fever at
> the age of 9, was so adept at lip-reading that it was easy to forget she was
> deaf. Once, without thinking, I turned away from her as I was speaking. ³I can
> no longer hear you,² she said sharply. 
³You mean you can no longer see me,² I
> said. 
³You may call it seeing,² she answered, ³but I experience it as
> hearing.² 
Lip-reading, seeing mouth movements, was immediately transformed
> for this patient into ³hearing² the sounds of speech in her mind. Her brain
> was converting one mode of sensation into another. 
In a similar way, blind
> people often find ways of ³seeing.² Some areas of the brain, if not
> stimulated, will atrophy and die. (³Use it or lose it,² neurologists often
> say.) But the visual areas of the brain, even in someone born blind, do not
> entirely disappear; instead, they are redeployed for other senses. We have all
> heard of blind people with unusually acute hearing, but other senses may be
> heightened, too. 
For example, Geerat Vermeij, a biologist at the University
> of California-Davis who has been blind since the age of 3, has identified many
> new species of mollusks based on tiny variations in the contours of their
> shells. He uses a sort of spatial or tactile giftedness that is beyond what
> any sighted person is likely to have. 
The writer Ved Mehta, also blind since
> early childhood, navigates in large part by using ³facial vision² ‹ the
> ability to sense objects by the way they reflect sounds, or subtly shift the
> air currents that reach his face. Ben Underwood, a remarkable boy who lost his
> sight at 3 and died at 16 in 2009, developed an effective, dolphin-like
> strategy of emitting regular clicks with his mouth and reading the resulting
> echoes from nearby objects. He was so skilled at this that he could ride a
> bike and play sports and even video games. 
People like Ben Underwood and Ved
> Mehta, who had some early visual experience but then lost their sight, seem to
> instantly convert the information they receive from touch or sound into a
> visual image ‹ ³seeing² the dots, for instance, as they read Braille with a
> finger. Researchers using functional brain imagery have confirmed that in such
> situations the blind person activates not only the parts of the cortex devoted
> to touch, but parts of the visual cortex as well. 
One does not have to be
> blind or deaf to tap into the brain¹s mysterious and extraordinary power to
> learn, adapt and grow. I have seen hundreds of patients with various deficits
> ‹ strokes, Parkinson¹s and even dementia ‹ learn to do things in new ways,
> whether consciously or unconsciously, to work around those deficits. 
That the
> brain is capable of such radical adaptation raises deep questions. To what
> extent are we shaped by, and to what degree do we shape, our own brains? And
> can the brain¹s ability to change be harnessed to give us greater cognitive
> powers? The experiences of many people suggest that it can. 
One patient I
> knew became totally paralyzed overnight from a spinal cord infection. At first
> she fell into deep despair, because she couldn¹t enjoy even little pleasures,
> like the daily crossword she had loved. 
After a few weeks, though, she asked
> for the newspaper, so that at least she could look at the puzzle, get its
> configuration, run her eyes along the clues. When she did this, something
> extraordinary happened. As she looked at the clues, the answers seemed to
> write themselves in their spaces. Her visual memory strengthened over the next
> few weeks, until she found that she was able to hold the entire crossword and
> its clues in her mind after a single, intense inspection ‹ and then solve it
> mentally. She had had no idea, she later told me, that such powers were
> available to her. 
This growth can even happen within a matter of days.
> Researchers at Harvard found, for example, that blindfolding sighted adults
> for as few as five days could produce a shift in the way their brains
> functioned: their subjects became markedly better at complex tactile tasks
> like learning Braille. 
Neuroplasticity ‹ the brain¹s capacity to create new
> pathways ‹ is a crucial part of recovery for anyone who loses a sense or a
> cognitive or motor ability. But it can also be part of everyday life for all
> of us. While it is often true that learning is easier in childhood,
> neuroscientists now know that the brain does not stop growing, even in our
> later years. Every time we practice an old skill or learn a new one, existing
> neural connections are strengthened and, over time, neurons create more
> connections to other neurons. Even new nerve cells can be generated. 
I have
> had many reports from ordinary people who take up a new sport or a musical
> instrument in their 50s or 60s, and not only become quite proficient, but
> derive great joy from doing so. Eliza Bussey, a journalist in her mid-50s who
> now studies harp at the Peabody conservatory in Baltimore, could not read a
> note of music a few years ago. In a letter to me, she wrote about what it was
> like learning to play Handel¹s ³Passacaille²: ³I have felt, for example, my
> brain and fingers trying to connect, to form new synapses. ... I know that my
> brain has dramatically changed.² Ms. Bussey is no doubt right: her brain has
> changed. 
Music is an especially powerful shaping force, for listening to and
> especially playing it engages many different areas of the brain, all of which
> must work in tandem: from reading musical notation and coordinating fine
> muscle movements in the hands, to evaluating and expressing rhythm and pitch,
> to associating music with memories and emotion. 
Whether it is by learning a
> new language, traveling to a new place, developing a passion for beekeeping or
> simply thinking about an old problem in a new way, all of us can find ways to
> stimulate our brains to grow, in the coming year and those to follow. Just as
> physical activity is essential to maintaining a healthy body, challenging
> one¹s brain, keeping it active, engaged, flexible and playful, is not only
> fun. It is essential to cognitive fitness. 
Oliver Sacks is the author of ³The
> Mind¹s Eye.²
 
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