Persuasive Research Paper
How the Blind See the World
Jeremy is an eight year old blind boy who has just taken the hearing test provided by the school. The test results were astonishing; Jeremy could hear about 1.2 times better than the average sighted child. Jeremy’s teacher, Mrs. Lundsten, was amazed by her handicapped student’s hearing ability. Like Mrs. Lundsten, people throughout history have thought of blindness as a handicap and that these people can not take care of themselves. However studies have shown that this may not be completely true. This is due to the blind’s enhanced auditory skills. A prime example of the blind’s enhanced hearing is similar to echolocation. Many people who experience blindness at an early age may develop a heightened sense of hearing.
In ancient times the blind were looked down upon by others and were often considered their own class. Blindness was considered to be a punishment for social or religious transgressions or it was a result …show more content…
The visual cortex in these individuals rearranges its purpose from sight to hearing and touch. Anne G. De Volder, Lauret Renier, and Joesef P. Rauscheker all have a PhD in neuroscience and conducted research on blind and sighted individuals’ occipital cortex:
In subjects who are blind from birth, the brain adapts itself and ‘reuses’ cortical areas that are normally devoted to visual abilities, in order to develop auditory and tactical abilities. During fMRI subjects were provided with sounds or vibrotactile stimuli and were requested to identify, to localize, or simply detect them. The task comparison shows that the occipital cortex of blind subjects, devoid of visual function from birth does reorganize itself to process these stimuli and the cortical reorganization follows the same architecture as the one of sighted
How the Blind See the World
Jeremy is an eight year old blind boy who has just taken the hearing test provided by the school. The test results were astonishing; Jeremy could hear about 1.2 times better than the average sighted child. Jeremy’s teacher, Mrs. Lundsten, was amazed by her handicapped student’s hearing ability. Like Mrs. Lundsten, people throughout history have thought of blindness as a handicap and that these people can not take care of themselves. However studies have shown that this may not be completely true. This is due to the blind’s enhanced auditory skills. A prime example of the blind’s enhanced hearing is similar to echolocation. Many people who experience blindness at an early age may develop a heightened sense of hearing.
In ancient times the blind were looked down upon by others and were often considered their own class. Blindness was considered to be a punishment for social or religious transgressions or it was a result …show more content…
The visual cortex in these individuals rearranges its purpose from sight to hearing and touch. Anne G. De Volder, Lauret Renier, and Joesef P. Rauscheker all have a PhD in neuroscience and conducted research on blind and sighted individuals’ occipital cortex:
In subjects who are blind from birth, the brain adapts itself and ‘reuses’ cortical areas that are normally devoted to visual abilities, in order to develop auditory and tactical abilities. During fMRI subjects were provided with sounds or vibrotactile stimuli and were requested to identify, to localize, or simply detect them. The task comparison shows that the occipital cortex of blind subjects, devoid of visual function from birth does reorganize itself to process these stimuli and the cortical reorganization follows the same architecture as the one of sighted