Workshop: Blindness, Brain Plasticity &Spatial Function

Vanderbilt University, Nashville TN

Investigators

Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This workshop's aim is to integrate recent findings about the spatial functioning of persons with severely impaired vision from the brain sciences and cognitive sciences, and to consider the implications for education and rehabilitative engineering. Central findings from brain sciences are focused on animal models and human imaging studies of plasticity and development that show the occipital cortex is recruited in tactile and auditory processing to a greater degree for people with early-onset blindness than for blindfolded-sighted people. Findings from cognitive sciences are focused on sensory substitution, individual differences, and developmental differences in spatial functioning. There has been little effort cutting across these areas of research, nor to explore how the findings may apply to learning, education, and rehabilitation of people with severe visual impairment. The proposal is to support a three day scientific workshop at Vanderbilt University. The participants would be 22 established investigators and 14 junior investigators from the brain sciences, cognitive sciences, rehabilitative engineering, and rehabilitation to present recent findings, analyze issues that cut across the different disciplines, propose applications to rehabilitation practice, and identify research needed to implement the applications.