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Do the blind dream in images? A blind man CAN navigate through a maze, using his sense of intuition. And facial expressions of joy and defeat are the same for both blind and sighted people, despite the fact that the blind have never seen them.

Researchers are studying a man who was blinded by a stroke but who is able to walk around obstacles without bumping into them. In BBC News, Helen Briggs quotes researcher Beatrice de Gelder as saying, “You can experience a total loss of your cortical vision but still retain some capacity to move around inside and out without damage to yourself. It shows us the importance of these evolutionary ancient visual paths. They contribute more than we think they do for us to function in the real world.”
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People who become blind early in life often develop greatmusical ability because they depend more on sound. RayCharles and Stevie Wonder are examples of this.

Researcher Pascal Belin asked 26 blind and sighted adults,ages 21 to 46, to judge whether two sounds were rising orfalling in pitch. Some of the blind people had lost theirsight before the age of two, others between the ages of fiveand 45. They found that the blind people who lost theirsight at an early age performed better than those who couldsee, and the earlier they went blind, the better they did onthe test. Berline says, “Early-blind subjects were betterthan both late-blind and sighted subjects at determining thedirection of pitch change.”
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New technology shows that people often see much less of what?s around them than they think. Tests show subjects miss even major events that happen right before their eyes. This may be one reason why police find eye witnesses so unreliable. During the recent D.C. area sniper spree by John Lee Malvo and John Allen Muhammad, witnesses said they saw a white van, but it turned out no white van was involved. Most people don’t notice their own blindness.
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