Drawing on his inner vision

The other day I happened by the library where I work, and stumbled upon a huge pile of old New Scientist magazines they were discarding. So, naturally, I picked up the stack and put them in my office, and have been progressively, if randomly, getting through them as I journey to and from the campus each day. Okay, they are a little out of date, but there's always something in every issue to hold my attention, and as most articles are short, it's perfect for the stop/start of public transport.

One story, from January 2005, caught my eye, and my imagination, as the very topic itself had come up in a lively informal discussion of philosophy only recently (at the pub). We were wondering if someone who was born blind could have any concept of colour, space, perspective, and pretty much all the things we sighted people take for granted. It turns out that, yes, they can.

Esref Armagan is an artist, whose paintings show an understanding of colour, perspective, light and shadow that belie the fact he is clinically blind, and his brain receives absolutely no information from his eyes about the lit world around him. Scientists scanning his brain revealed that even though his eyes have literally no function (he was effectively born blind) his visual cortex is active when he draws. This is similar to the activity of a braille readers visual cortex when they feel a page of text.

Some researchers feel this shows our understanding of what sight, and indeed all our senses, actually are needs some revision. A lot of revision. It is certainly clear that our "basic" senses are not the only source of understanding of the world around us, which seems to be more to do with how our brains process information than the form in which it is delivered to them. Below is a video, showing Aramagan composing a new drawing.