研究人员发现,先天盲目的儿童在重获视力之初,并不能视觉化他们以前曾触摸过的物品,新成果发表在日前在线出版的《自然—神经科学》期刊上。这一结果在某种意义上说明,看的能力是通过学习获得的:人们学会了将所看见和所感觉的物体对应起来,这种能力并非与生俱来。
普拉卡什(Project Prakash)项目是在一项在印度实施的治疗可治愈失明的人道主义和科学事业。Richard Held和同事合作,对一群8~17岁接受普拉卡什项目治疗的患者进行研究。所有的受试者均是因先天性白内障或角膜混浊而在出生时就失明了,这种情况的失明可通过白内障切除或角膜移植而得以治愈。受试者被要求感觉一块建筑用砖块,然后再被要求将这种砖与他们曾经接触过的两种砖块进行比较。尽管对绝大多数人而言这是一件很容易的事,但是,这些患者却无法正确将他们所看见的砖块与以前曾触摸过的砖块正确配对。然而,当部分接受测试的孩子接受了为期5天的短期训练后,他们的表现有实质性提高。(生物谷Bioon.com)
生物谷推荐原文出处:
Nature Neuroscience DOI:10.1038/nn.2795
The newly sighted fail to match seen with felt
Richard Held; Yuri Ostrovsky; Beatrice de Gelder; Tapan Gandhi; Suma Ganesh; Umang Mathur; Pawan Sinha
Would a blind subject, on regaining sight, be able to immediately visually recognize an object previously known only by touch? We addressed this question, first formulated by Molyneux three centuries ago, by working with treatable, congenitally blind individuals. We tested their ability to visually match an object to a haptically sensed sample after sight restoration. We found a lack of immediate transfer, but such cross-modal mappings developed rapidly.