How Cognitive Neuroscience is Changing the Way we Think About Deafness and Blindness
Francesco Pavani
Cognitive neuroscience is changing the way we look at mental processes and behaviour. In this brief article, I will propose examples of how thinking about deafness and blindness has been influenced by cognitive neuroscience in recent decades. Specifically, in discussing the phenomena of brain plasticity in deafness and blindness, I will focus on the observation that the auditory cortices of deaf people or the visual cortices of blind people, are systematically involved in processing signals from intact sensory systems instead of remaining unused and silent. This phenomenon, called crossmodal plasticity, is progressively leading to a better understanding of how the brains of people with deafness or blindness change because of these experiences of sensory deprivation. However, it has also been used to guide clinical or educational decisions related to deafness and blindness, sometimes translating complex concepts into overly simplistic — if not misleading — implications. This example is particularly evident in the case of maladaptive interpretations of crossmodal plasticity for deaf people who use a cochlear implant.
Keywords
Cognitive neurosciences, Deafness, Cochlear implants, Multisensoriality, Crossmodal plasticity.
