X-Message-Number: 12512 Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 20:23:47 -0400 From: Jan Coetzee <> Subject: Feel With The Mind's Eye Scientists Show How We Feel With The Mind's Eye LONDON (Reuters) - Researchers in the United States said Wednesday they have shown that the part of the brain that processes sight is also involved in the sense of touch. The research, reported in the science journal Nature, challenges the belief that different regions of the brain deal with the sensations of the various senses which could have important implications for blind and deaf people. ``The findings are relevant to understanding not only how the brain normally processes sensory information, but also how such processing is altered in conditions such as blindness, deafness or numbness and ultimately, to improving methods of communication for individuals afflicted with these disorders,'' said Dr Krishnankutty Sathian. The professor of neurology at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, and her colleagues showed that the visual cortex of the brain which processes vision is also necessary for the sense of touch. ``Recent findings that visual cortex is active during Braille reading in the blind are perhaps less surprising if viewed in this context,'' Sathian said in a statement. The scientists studied 14 sighted volunteers who performed a series of tests while the functions of various parts of the brain region associated with the sense of sight and then with the sense of touch were blocked using a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=12512