Blind Vision: The Neuroscience of Visual Impairment

An investigation of the effects of blindness and other types of visual deficit on cognitive abilities.

Can a blind person see? The very idea seems paradoxical. And yet, if we conceive of “seeing” as the ability to generate internal mental representations that may contain visual details, the idea of blind vision becomes a concept subject to investigation. In this book, Zaira Cattaneo and Tomaso Vecchi examine the effects of blindness and other types of visual deficit on the development and functioning of the human cognitive system. Drawing on behavioral and neurophysiological data, Cattaneo and Vecchi analyze research on mental imagery, spatial cognition, and compensatory mechanisms at the sensorial, cognitive, and cortical levels in individuals with complete or profound visual impairment. They find that our brain does not need our eyes to “see.”

Cattaneo and Vecchi address critical questions of broad importance: the relationship of visual perception to imagery and working memory and the extent to which mental imagery depends on normal vision; the functional and neural relationships between vision and the other senses; the specific aspects of the visual experience that are crucial to cognitive development or specific cognitive mechanisms; and the extraordinary plasticity of the brain—as illustrated by the way that, in the blind, the visual cortex may be reorganized to support other perceptual or cognitive funtions. In the absence of vision, the other senses work as functional substitutes and are often improved. With Blind Vision, Cattaneo and Vecchi take on the “tyranny of the visual,” pointing to the importance of the other senses in cognition.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ The MIT Press
Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 4, 2011
Edition ‏ : ‎ 1st
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 269 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 026201503X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0262015035
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.4 pounds
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.12 x 7.17 x 0.81 inches
Grade level ‏ : ‎ 12 and up
Best Sellers Rank: #4,267,231 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #718 in Ophthalmology (Books) #2,341 in Neuroscience (Books) #3,939 in Medical Cognitive Psychology
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