Blind people use visual brain for language

Abstract

People who are blind use parts of their brain that usually handle vision to process language. Highlighting the brain's extraordinary ability to requisition unused real estate for new functions. Olivier Collignon at the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL) and his colleagues used magnetoencephalography to scan electrical activity in the brains of volunteers who were sighted or blind. Both groups showed activity in the brain's auditory cortex, a region that processes sounds, while listening to the clips. But the volunteers who were blind showed activity in the visual cortex, too, this suggests that these cells are vital for understanding language.