Rarely do the blind become engineers, because studying engineering is multi-sensory and working as an engineer is widely visual. But it doesn’t mean the people born without sight cannot solve math problems.
A study by a team from Johns Hopkins University involved 17 people blind since birth who were found to have areas of visual cortex that become active when the participants are asked to solve algebra problems. This was possible with the use of functional MRI.
Marina Bedny, one of the authors and an assistant professor in the department of psychological and brain sciences in the university, said that as the equations get harder and harder, activity in the said areas goes up in a blind person.
In contrast, 19 people with normal sight were also asked to do the same problems but the same visual areas of their brain showed no increase in activity.
Photo by RNIB
Previous research indicates that the visual cortex could be rewired to process information from other senses, like hearing and touch. The team tried to explore on something that is out of the expected, which is algebra, to test that area of the brain.
Participants both blind and sighted were asked to solve algebra problems like 12 minus 3 equals x, and 4 minus 2 equals x, to which they will respond if x had the same value in the two equations.
The results of the experiment showed that two brain areas associated with number processing became active in both blind and sighted people, but only blind participants had increased activity in areas usually reserved for vision.
Source: NPR
