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Man Learns To See Again After 40 Years Of Blindness
MonTemplar writes "BBC News Online reports the story of Mike May, from California, who lost one eye and was blinded in the other at the age of three after an accident. Now, doctors have been able to restore the sight to his remaining eye by transplanting corneal and limbal stem cells. The operation, and their subsequent work with Mr May to monitor his recovery, in an attempt to better understand how the brain learns to interpret the signals from the eyes, have been published in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Ironically, being able to see again has meant Mr May has had to re-learn some activities, such as skiing or crossing the road, where he had become proficient when blind."
...a problem which he could avoid by wrapping a towel around his head.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
Maybe this kink of thing will become commonplace in curing blindness caused by injury. My mother would sure appreciate it, seeing (No pun intended) as how she's already lost the sight in one eye, and the other is slowly losing sight as well. She's only 43, so she'll probably still be around if and when this becomes available to her.
Despite millions of years of evolution, human beings, taken as a group, are still stupid, panicky animals.
His 3D perception and face and object recognition was still severely impaired. Mr May could only identify around a quarter of common objects shown to him. And he was also only able to tell if an unfamiliar face was male or female 70% of the time.
I thought this was really interesting. We tend to take so many things for granted. There must be millions of objects that he is very familiar with by touch and sound, but he's never had the chance to see what they look like. It must take a really long time to learn what everything looks like.
Reading this story, I feel very grateful that I can tell the difference between men and women (with a few exceptions).
This reminds me of a documentary that the CBC showed not too far back about Jens Naumann, who was blind due to two separate accidents but regained sight through the use of eyeglasses-mounted cameras. The image from the camera was then processed and routed to his visual cortex via cables.
"Max, come over here. French-Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone." - Dutch Schultz
He could freakin ski when he was blind??!! Sonny Bono is rolling over in his grave right now.
1;
Ironically, being able to see again has meant Mr May has had to re-learn some activities, such as skiing or crossing the road, where he had become proficient when blind."
Interestingly, most blind people don't really consider blindness a "disability" per se, but simply a challengee to get used to. I've met countless people with various types of disabilities that really don't count them as "disabilities". For instance, I've spoken with the Deaf/Hard of Hearing who don't consider themselves "disabled", merely more of a "linguistic minority".
The problems they run into are simply a lack of equal access that people without a disability (or a severe disability) take for granted. For instance, in that old building that has yet to be renovated, a person with full usage of their legs will have no issue getting up the stairs, but someone who requires the use of a wheelchair, or might be in crutches, or has to use a walker, etc., will find it impossible to get into that building.
What most people forget, when responding to ADA laws, Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, W3C WAI, etc., is that these principles of equal and timely access do not just help those with disabilities, but those without as well.
For instance, trying to move a big cart full of computer equipment into that building? It sure would be easier with curbcuts, an elevator, and recessed door frames. Trying to access the web via that shiny new PDA you just bought? Too bad the site uses Flash navigation without a text equivalent... ad nauseum
The fact that this disability was part of his life, means that it wasn't a roadblock for him, merely an alternate route. He simply did things a different way.
the washington post also has an article on the guy, perhaps a little more in depth. pretty neat stuff.
It is apparently a huge social taboo in the deaf culture to do anything to try and cure your deafness. An example is this woman who got fired for getting a cochlear implant. This is just fucking dumb. Can you imagine if all the people with amputated legs would hate you if you lost your leg and got a prosthesis?
Another thing along the same lines, that I can't find with a quick Google, is babies. Apparently this genetically deaf couple decided to get a sperm and egg donation so that their baby would be able to hear. They got ostracized.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
This is because learning to distinguish faces is mostly a learned skill... there seems to be a certain stage of development in early life where the brain is "primed" to learn this sort of thing... and if you miss this opportunity (due to blindness etc...) it becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible, to learn to distinguish faces later in life. An appropriate parallel would be with "wild children", kids that grow up in the wild unattended (it happens occasionally) and don't learn to speak. There seems to be a time during cognitive development which the brain is also primed to learn speech (or develop a base set of phonemes, at any rate), and if this stage is missed, the person has a very difficult time learning to speak, and always speaks "strangely".
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
An example, going back to the Civil Rights Movement analogy, would be a prominent African American pop-star taking on a progressively paler complexion to his skin over a few years (I won't name any names, but his initials are Michael Jackson).
Actually, in slight defense of MJ, his skin lightening has nothing to do with surgery or any voluntary act. Michael Jackson has a condition known as Vitiligo, which causes his skin to become progressively paler over the years as it loses its pigment. I ought to know, as I have the condition as well. As I get older, I'll get whiter and whiter until I have no real pigment left in my skin. It spreads from a patch or two to the whole body, and is extremely pronounced in black people (it's pretty pronounced in me because I'm mixed-racial, but I'm only 24 years old so it won't get really bad for several years). It's the reason Jackson wore a glove in the 80's.
Of course, this skin condition--also known as Leukoderma--has NOTHING to do with the fact that he now has no nose.
I got to say that as cool as the technique to restore his sight was, I'm more interested in the neurology. For 40 years his visual cortex was utilized for other functions than sight, otherwise one would expect them to atrophy away. Will he lose some functions that his brain has mapped onto those areas now that they are needed again for sight? What would be super cool would be to see EEG or MRI scans (or both or whatever--I am not a neurologist) of his visual cortex before and after the operation, to see what changes in brain activity have taken place. I imagine something like that is in the Nature Neuroscience article, but I don't have access to it here. Anybody read the article?