[SteveFish]

Yor_on. Sensory areas of the brain develop, in part, on the basis of neural activity from the periphery. The visual cortex normally receives connections, preferentially, from primary visual input from the eye (via the thalamic lateral geniculate and the midbrain superior colliculus). If the activity from the visual input is denied at birth, neural activity of other sensory inputs allow their axons to invade the cortex and make connections. So, the visual cortex of congenitally blind individuals does receive input from other senses, especially from those thalamic areas that mediate touch and sound that lie near the lateral geniculate. These individual very likely see touch and sound, sort of. Steve

[yor_on (OP)]

That's really cool Steve. The way our brains works never stops to amaze me. I have a link, yeah I'm a collector of 'links' that I think illustrates your description splendidly. Take a look and see if you agree. Blind? Who ?? Me? 

 

[yor_on (OP)]

In fact, reading you make me quite hopeful
We seem to have an amazing level of adaption.

[SteveFish]

Yor_on, auditory localization is one of our unrecognized skills. Your brain can sort out and focus on the person you are talking to at a very noisy gathering on the basis of the direction their voice is coming from. Put on a blindfold and have a friend move around while you listen. You should be able to point right at them. With a little experimenting you will find that high frequency and sharp onset noises are easiest to localize. I have done this and it is fun.

It is known that this ability is enhanced in blind individuals, but the portion due to brain reorganization (as apposed to behavioral adaptation) is maximized if blindness occurs very early in postnatal development. The blind boy in the video has somehow learned to be able to detect echos. I don't think that his acuity is very good and much of what he does involves knowing what to expect in his environment. The experts of this skill, bats and whales, have very large portions of their brains devoted just to echolocation. Steve