Blind adults taught to 'read' using sounds that represent letters use the same area of the brain's visual cortex that sighted humans use when reading.
Using a program that 'describes' images in sound, Amir Amedi at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel and his team trained eight congenitally blind people to decipher the shapes of letters and objects such as faces and tools. The authors then imaged participants' brains as they listened to sounds associated with letters or other objects. When the volunteers read using the sounds, they activated the same part of the visual cortex — the visual word form area (VWFA) — as sighted controls did when viewing letters.
The work shows that the VWFA is not dependent on visual information alone, and suggests that the visual cortex may be trained to help recognize the environment, even in those who are blind from birth.
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Blind reading with sounds. Nature 491, 304 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/491304d
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/491304d
