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When Blind People Do Algebra, the Brain's Visual Areas Light Up (npr.org)
People born without sight appear to solve math problems using visual areas of the brain. NPR has a fascinating report on this: A functional MRI study of 17 people blind since birth found that areas of visual cortex became active when the participants were asked to solve algebra problems, a team from Johns Hopkins reports in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "And as the equations get harder and harder, activity in these areas goes up in a blind person," says Marina Bedny, an author of the study and an assistant professor in the department of psychological and brain sciences at Johns Hopkins University. In 19 sighted people doing the same problems, visual areas of the brain showed no increase in activity. "That really suggests that yes, blind individuals appear to be doing math with their visual cortex," Bedny says. The findings, published online Friday, challenge the idea that brain tissue intended for one function is limited to tasks that are closely related.
if they'd stop wasting that part of their brain on algebra they could see!
So they're using their GPU to accelerate math processing?
Do they support CUDA or OpenCL?
Algebra calls for pattern recognition... and the visual cortex is VERY good at pattern recognition.
Blind people use the visual cortex for things like echo-location, etc., as well as to "visualize" the layout of their surroundings, which makes sense - the visual cortex is for spatial relationships. Changing the input source shouldn't make much of a difference - it's not like the brain isn't somewhat plastic.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
group theory
fMRI has been debunked over and over again. Stop wasting money and time on this bullshit.
Blind men get their hands on some titties?
His eyes react to light - the dials detect it!
When I was figuring out how differential equations work I found I understood it better visualizing it in my head instead of just doing the math on a calculator.
I'm surprised it's not lighting up for everyone.
Then again, maybe it is too busy processing input from the optic nerves so the brain had to use some other area to do the algebra.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Back in the 1970s I was an undergraduate at a highly-ranked math department. One of the professors there had no eyes. (It was a birth defect - they had not formed, and his face was slightly collapsed where they should have been.)
When a student would try to skip doing some part of a rigorous proof by substituting a geometric drawing, the other profs would ask "How would you explain it to [him]?".
This guy was VERY good. But he had a "blind spot" occasionally when a graphic analogy would have pointed him to some existing proof that would apply. (I recall once when he was discussing some bottleneck in what he was working on and another professor pointed out that the troublesome piece of the problem was equivalent to an angle trisection with compass and ruler.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
So they're using their GPU to accelerate math processing?
Perhaps, or perhaps not. Given the usual submission to publication lead times on journals I suspect they have some debugging to do.
bah! por isso aquela merda da helena tava passando de carro na frente da minha casa de madrugada... pra comprar cocaína e oferecer a buceta fudida dela. caralho... essa é a primeira buceta open source que eu já vi hehehehe
Studies of the congenitally blind show that the visual cortex is in use while reading braille, too.
Note that this means that the visual cortex is no longer used to "see" -- electrode stimulation of the visual cortex in the congenitally blind results in no phosphenes.
A bug in fMRI software could invalidate 15 years of brain research
Let's hope this study used the latest patch?
In grad school I had quite a reputation (often being referred to as "the counterexample machine") for producing counterexamples to answer questions as to whether a given proposition was true. These solutions almost always came to me visually.
There is an old idea that the visual cortex involved when we visualize past experiences or memorized material.
In the blind subjects, perhaps, this activity has been registered as a distinct, while in the control group it is drowned in the noise of normally functioning visual cortex.
So, it is interesting but inconclusive.
Well, it doesn't have anything else better to do.
Since their visual cortex is now reassigned to other functions like solving algebra, I wonder what they would see if they suddenly got their sight back?
That's how Ron Burgundy rolls.
I've had a life-long interest in writing systems. IMO Japanese being the most complex and Georgian the most beautiful.
BTW I HATE emoji but I love unicode.
Unless this article is mistaken, this sounds like an extension of a known phenomenon. And I can't remember where I read it, but I also remember reading another article years ago theorizing that in some cases this effect could be the brain sort of "redistributing" its load to areas that are underutilized and can handle it. There was no proof, but I thought it was an interesting theory.
In short, just because you don't have a functioning sensory organ, that doesn't mean the brain will completely stop using the main area the organ would have used to interpret its input.
Neuroscientists have known for years that the brain has few "dedicated" areas for any particular function, such as math. Instead, many collections of neurons can accomplish the same function. This is called degeneracy. (Terrible name, I know... let the jokes about degenerate mathematicians begin....)
Also, the brain doesn't "light up" as if were sitting around idle and suddenly leaps into action. The whole brain is active all the time. This is called intrinsic brain activity.
Anyone who talks about brain areas "lighting up," or believes that each region of the brain has a dedicated function, is at least a decade behind modern neuroscience.
Many musicians, myself included, claim to hear better with their eyes closed. I've long thought it was the same thing; that the visual processing circuitry of my brain is freed up to listen to the music when my eyes are closed. I listen better, and comprehend better. Wonder if they've collected any data from musicians?
dpa