Andrew Huberman· PhD
In individuals that are blind from birth, the so-called occipital cortex, the visual cortex in the back, becomes overtaken by hearing. The neurons there will start to respond to sounds as well as braille touch. And actually there's a one particularly tragic incident where a woman who was blind since birth and because of neuroimaging studies, we knew her visual cortex was no longer visual, it was responsible for braille reading and for hearing, she had a stroke that actually took out most of the function of her visual cortex. So then she was blind, she couldn't braille read or hear. She did recover some aspect of function. Now, most people they don't end up in that highly unfortunate situation. And what we know is that for instance, blind people who use their visual cortex for braille reading and for hearing, have much better auditory acuity and touch acuity.