'Visual' parsing can be taught quickly without visual experience during critical periods.

ABSTRACT: Cases of invasive sight-restoration in congenital blind adults demonstrated that acquiring visual abilities is extremely challenging, presumably because visual-experience during critical-periods is crucial for learning visual-unique concepts (e.g. size constancy). Visual rehabilitation can also be achieved using sensory-substitution-devices (SSDs) which convey visual information non-invasively through sounds. We tested whether one critical concept--visual parsing, which is highly-impaired in sight-restored patients--can be learned using SSD. To this end, congenitally blind adults participated in a unique, relatively short (~70 hours), SSD-'vision' training. Following this, participants successfully parsed 2D and 3D visual objects. Control individuals naïve to SSDs demonstrated that while s

SUBMITTER: Reich L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4611203 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature