[gui-talk] brain mapping for tactile or vision use
tribble
lauraeaves at yahoo.com
Thu Dec 11 01:37:22 UTC 2008
Thanks for the book recommendation.
The brain is indeed an amazing machine. I was talking to someone when I was
in college who was a cellist and played in the symphony. She was saying the
moves she needed to make to produce the intricate music on cue was built
into her fingers (or as I believe she meant, was programmed into her motor
cortex). So she didn't think about every note, but just played intricate
moves.
I have heard that musicians' brains are actually quite different from the
average person's brains in the way they map things.
Anyway, reading I believe is similar -- you just have to practice.
--le
----- Original Message -----
From: "seville allen" <ceoallen at verizon.net>
To: "'NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List'" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 4:13 PM
Subject: [gui-talk] brain mapping for tactile or vision use
The NIH did a study several years ago and it showed that those blind for a
long time had a larger tactile portion to the brain. Those with vision, of
course, had a larger visual portion. I do believe that the reason it really
takes about a year to get good blindness training is that the brain is
remapping for seeing the world through one's fingers just as it remapps for
use of the other hand if a right-handed person needs to learn to use the
left because of damage to the right hand.
Also, Read Mike May's book "Crashing through" it is about his surgery which
brought sight to his eyes; notice the phrase sight to his eyes.
Interesting and most fascinating.
-----Original Message-----
From: gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of tribble
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 10:26 AM
To: NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] braille
Good point, but I don't think I do the internal translation into print when
I'm reading braille -- I pretty much think "t" when I feel that dot
pattern -- my problem is in identifying whether which dots are there or not.
I often have to site rubbing my finger around on the braille character a
split second or more to figure out what I am feeling. It's the same reason
I never took to the optacon -- I couldn't tell the shape right away -- it
just took too long to recognize the character with my finger.
I don't know if this is sensitivity in the fingertips or internal
processing. Probably the latter and the lack of practice.
Actually this leads to another question that I'd like to run by the list: I
was listening to something on one of the discovery channels about the
difference in the brain between sighted persons and persons blind from
birth. I don't know if the guy knew what he was talking about but he said
that in the blind person, the visual cortex was remapped to handle tactile
processing. (I know that the VC is remapped, that is obvious, but I don't
think that it is known what it is mapped to.) Anyway, given this, he
claimed that trying to give vision to a blind-from-birth person would
actually cause more problems than it would solve. So is there an actual
study of brain waves for various activities in a person blind from birth?
Cheers.
--le
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rick Roderick" <rickrod at insightbb.com>
To: "NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 8:14 AM
Subject: [gui-talk] braille
I changed the subject line to reflect the discussion.
I have a theory, or perhaps, a hyposis, about why braille is usually read
more slowly by people who learn it later.
When a person learns a foreign language, they can be slowed down by
word-for-word translation. When I took French in high school and college, I
was never able to conquer this. I am not discounting Laura's comments
about finger sensitivity, but I also wonder if a role is played by the
need, at first, to read the braille and translate it in one's mind to the
print symbol.
Those of us who are congenitally blind did not learn this first. I know
that when I hear a word spelled, I think of it in braille.
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