How do blind people use their visual cortex?

People who have been blind from birth make use of the visual parts of their brain to refine their sensation of sound and touch, according to an international team of researchers. “We can see that in the blind, large parts of the visual cortex light up when participants are engaged in auditory and tactile tasks.

How does the brain identify sounds?

The brain translates impulses from the ear into sounds that we know and understand. The tiny hair cells in our inner ear send electrical signals to the auditory nerve which is connected to the auditory centre of the brain where the electrical impulses are perceived by the brain as sound.

Where is the visual part of the brain?

occipital lobe
The primary visual cortex is found in the occipital lobe in both cerebral hemispheres. It surrounds and extends into a deep sulcus called the calcarine sulcus.

What happens to the occipital lobe when you are blind?

Word Blindness (Alexia) Occipital lobe damage also leads to an inability to read/recognize written words. It occurs when visual information from the occipital lobe cannot pass to the areas of the brain that process language.

How does a blind persons brain work?

A striking example is that in blind people, the brain’s visual cortex is repurposed for auditory tasks—such as detecting motion and pinpointing where a sound is coming from. “So we take brain activity in one person, and we correlate it to brain activity in another person.

How does the brain process visual information?

The moment light meets the retina, the process of sight begins. The information from the retina — in the form of electrical signals — is sent via the optic nerve to other parts of the brain, which ultimately process the image and allow us to see. …

What part of the brain interprets hearing?

auditory cortex
The auditory cortex is the part of the temporal lobe that processes auditory information in humans and many other vertebrates.

Do blind people use their occipital lobe?

The early-blind subjects had even more activity in the visual cortex than the late-blind subjects. More specifically, the people who were blind from birth had more activation in occipital-temporal cortex areas called V5/MT and V8 and in the occipital cortex on the side of the brain opposite their reading hand.

How does the occipital lobe process vision?

The occipital lobe is mainly responsible for interpreting the visual world around the body, such as the shape, color, and location of an object. It then relays this information to other parts of the brain, which give this visual information its meaning.