# If a blind person could suddenly see would the visual world make sense or not? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 16, 2003, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-blind-person-could-suddenly-see-would-the-visual-world-make-sense-or-not/188987 "2003-07-16T21:45:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2003, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-blind-person-could-suddenly-see-would-the-visual-world-make-sense-or-not/188987/1 "2003-07-16T21:45:40Z")
What would happen if someone who was completely blind all their life could suddenly see. Would the visual world make immediate perfect sense or not? Has this ever happened in IRL? If so what happened? ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2003, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-blind-person-could-suddenly-see-would-the-visual-world-make-sense-or-not/188987/2 "2003-07-16T22:29:44Z")
I read about this once. Assuming they can learn to focus & learn to use their eyes, which is quite a big adjustment in itself, they miss their old world of touch & some can’t take it & commit suicide. I think that more of them do that then deaf people who get their hearing back. This was in some book, The Psychology of Deafness which I read in the 70s. ---
**Author:** ![Super\_Gnat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Super\_Gnat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Super_Gnat)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2003, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-blind-person-could-suddenly-see-would-the-visual-world-make-sense-or-not/188987/3 "2003-07-16T22:56:01Z")
All of the following is from a book I once looked at in the library. I don’t remember the title or anything, so take it at that value. When surgery for cataracts was first developed, some doctors sort of wandered through Europe performing the surgery for people who had been blind for years, or for their entire lives. Some of them, after undergoing the surgery and getting a glimpse of the world, closed their eyes and found it better to pretend to be blind again. Others went on to seeing lives. I recall they gave a quote from one girl, who I think was a teenager when the operation was performed, and had previously been blind her entire life. She said she kept her eyes closed for a while, but then one day in the yard she opened them and saw a tree with light streaming through the leaves. After that, she decided to see again. Once again, I can’t remember where I read this, but I’m sure there exists a book about the early days of cataract surgery and its effects on patients that would answer your question. ---
**Author:** ![KRC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/45deac/32.png) [@KRC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KRC)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2003, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-blind-person-could-suddenly-see-would-the-visual-world-make-sense-or-not/188987/4 "2003-07-16T23:29:42Z")
If you can, go to the library and get the book “An Anthropologist on Mars” by Oliver Sacks. It has a chapter called “To See and Not See” which describes the life of a man blinded by cataracts since early childhood. An operation removes the cataracts but the man has trouble understanding what he sees. He can pick up the details of what he sees but not put them into a coherent whole: “This was one reason the cat, visually, was so puzzling: he would see a paw, the nose, the tail, an ear, but could not see all of them together, see the cat as a whole.” This man also went to a local zoo and wasn’t able to recognize the animals unless they moved. He had trouble judging distance and was startled by birds several feet away because he couldn’t tell how far they were from him. Far from thinking “It’s a miracle,” he found regaining his vision something very difficult to adjust to. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2003, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-blind-person-could-suddenly-see-would-the-visual-world-make-sense-or-not/188987/5 "2003-07-16T23:33:04Z")
If the individual is blind from birth, then the region of the brain responsible for sight never developed the ability to process images, or to “see”. This ability must be developed in the very early years or it will be lost. Folks with severe congenital cataracts or corneal opacities (consistent with total blindness) since birth who have had them repaired do not develop the ability to process visual information. So no, they can’t “see” after having vision restored. If the original visual defect was less severe, and allowed the patient to distinguish light/dark differences and shapes, the results could be different, even if the vision was slowly lost as development progressed. That’s due to the brain developing some rudimentary ability to process images, which it would tend to retain over time. But if the ability doesn’t develop in infancy, it’s not going to be gained later. QtM, MD ---
**Author:** ![The\_Bad\_Astronomer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f05b48/32.png) [@The\_Bad\_Astronomer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Bad_Astronomer)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2003, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-blind-person-could-suddenly-see-would-the-visual-world-make-sense-or-not/188987/6 "2003-07-17T02:10:40Z")
I saw a TV show or read an article about this (don’t remember the name, nuts) where a man had his vision restored. He had a very difficult time with photographs and drawings; perspective had no meaning to him! It makes sense; he would walk down a hall using his hand to feel his way; a drawing showing the edges of the wall/floor/ceiling converging at the vanishing point had no meaning to his tactile brain. ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2003, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-blind-person-could-suddenly-see-would-the-visual-world-make-sense-or-not/188987/7 "2003-07-17T14:57:04Z")
I like this subject because people often ask me why I wouldn’t want to get my hearing back. I have to explain to them that if I got it back then I probably wouldn’t be able to focus out background sounds, like they can, so all the sounds of the world would come in all at once & very loud at that (unlike hearing aids, where you can adjust the volume). I figured it would take about ten years to adjust, if I could take it. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2003, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-blind-person-could-suddenly-see-would-the-visual-world-make-sense-or-not/188987/8 "2003-07-17T15:44:04Z")
I came across a report in an eighteenth century scientific journal about a doctor who was able to repair a person’s iris so that it would function. This involved plunging a needle into the eye – without anaesthetic (this was long before cocaine derivatives were known). The thought of it gives me shivers. The article claimed that the operation gave sight to a previously sightless woman, who was, of course, delighted with the results. I realize that this contradicts Qadgop’s jottings above, and I know he’s a doctor, and what he says makes a great deal of sense. But this report stated otherwise. Maybe it was wishful thinking on the part of the 18th century doctor. ---
**Author:** ![rodmunch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b77776/32.png) [@rodmunch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rodmunch)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2003, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-blind-person-could-suddenly-see-would-the-visual-world-make-sense-or-not/188987/9 "2003-07-17T15:45:54Z")
i tend not to be able to filterout background sounds. if im reading something and hear so much as a car in the distance or a bird or something it totally throws me off what i was doing ---
**Author:** ![Tomcat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Tomcat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tomcat)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2003, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-blind-person-could-suddenly-see-would-the-visual-world-make-sense-or-not/188987/10 "2003-07-17T16:35:53Z")
Hopefully **Qadgop** can shed some light (punny in about 3 more sentences) on this: Not only does your brain have to learn how to process images, it also has to learn how to filter the light This is why certain hallucinogens affect us the way they do. They temporarilly allow us to ‘see’ things our brains normally filter out. I know this is true because I have experimented with hallucinogenic mushrooms to test this very thing (all in the name of science!). Back in the good ‘ol college days I was booming once and for giggles decided to carve a white candle (I think I wanted to make it look like one of those fancy candles). As soon as I started to carve it, I noticed the edges of the shavings were colored. I then cut into the candle a straight line and the line became a deep-blue almost black line on this white candle. I gave it to a friend who saw the same thing. We even tested if we were doing it to ourselves- my friend turned his back and carved into the candle then held it out for me to see, there was written "hi!’ in dark lines. The next day all I could see was scratches that looked like a whiter-white than the candle. But not dark lines. A year or so later I tried mushrooms again and did the same experiment- same thing. Dark lines while on the drug, white scratches the next day. Therefore I concluded that the drug was somehow allowing me to see more of a visual spectrum or somehow my filter was different. Since the candle across the room has very distinct lines in it that don’t waver or turn into goblins or anything like that (meaning a true hallucinogenic response), I must be seeing/interpreting a different light range or image than normal. Anyone else do hallucinogens? Now I haven’t done mushrooms in years and years (but I am thinking of going to A’dam soon…) but I have talked with people about this and they have noticed similar things. Normal things affect your perception. Anyone who wears eyeglasses can tell you that when they change prescriptions their eyesight is all messed up for a few hours to a couple of days. Straight lines don’t look straight, perspective is all messed up, etc. Your brain has to re-learn how to process the new information it receives. Also, isn’t there some phenomena associated with how our eyes track images that allow Camcorders to have an electronic stabilizing function? -Tcat ---
**Author:** ![Taran](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/edb3f5/32.png) [@Taran](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taran)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2003, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-blind-person-could-suddenly-see-would-the-visual-world-make-sense-or-not/188987/11 "2003-07-17T16:47:50Z")
**KRC** pretty much nailed it. One more example: when this patient (given the name ‘Virgil’ in Sacks’ book) visited the zoo, he looked into one of the enclosures and saw a gorilla (this was fairly far along in his recovery). When asked to describe it, he said that it looked basically like a man. He then found a gorilla statue and ran his hands over it, as he had been accustomed to doing while blind. After doing that he realized that the gorilla didn’t look much like a man at all (different posture, arms, face, etc), and was now able to _see_ that. Sacks’ conclusion from this IIRC was that the ability to form a model of the world around through vision is a learned skill, not something innate. Virgil eventually suffered a series of strokes and died without ever getting much use from his new vision. Not an encouraging story overall. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Svinlesha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/22d042/32.png) [@Mr.Svinlesha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Svinlesha)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2003, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-blind-person-could-suddenly-see-would-the-visual-world-make-sense-or-not/188987/12 "2003-07-17T17:12:31Z")
**Super Gnat** : You may be referring to the book by Marius von Senden, entitled _Space and Sight_; or you may be referring to Annie Dillard’s marvelous _Pilgrim at Tinker Creek_, which summarizes his report in the chapter on seeing. Here are few more examples, lifted from Dillard’s poetic autobiography: > [@](#): > > \*Before the operation, a doctor would give a blind patient a cube and a sphere; the patient would tongue it or feel it with his hands, and name it correctly. After the operation the doctor would show the same objects to the patient without letting him touch them; now he had no clue whatsoever what he was seeing…. > > Of another postoperative patient, the doctor writes, “I have found in her no notion of size, for example, not even within the narrow limits which she might have encompassed with the aid of touch. Thus when I asked her to show me how big her mother was, she did not stretch out her hands, but set her two index-fingers a few inches apart.” Other doctors reported their patients’ own statements to similar effect. “The room he was in…he knew to be but part of the house, yet he could not conceive that the whole house could look bigger”; “Those who are blind from birth…have no real conception of height or distance. A house that is a mile away is thought of as nearby, but requiring the taking of a lot of steps….” > > In general the newly sighted see the world as a dazzle of color-patches. They are pleased by the sensation of color, and learn quickly to name the colors, but the rest of seeing is tormentingly difficult. Soon after his operation a patient “generally bumps into one of these color patches and observes them to be substantial, since they resist him as tactual object do. In walking it also strikes him – or can if he pays attention – that he is continually passing in between the colours he sees, that he can go past a visual object, that a part of it steadily disappears from view; and that in spite of this, however he twists and turns – whether entering the room from the door, for example, or returning back to it – he always has a visual space in front of him. Thus he gradually comes to realize there is also a space behind him, which he does not see.” > > The mental effort involved in these reasonings proves overwhelming for many patients. It oppresses them to realize, if they ever do at all, the tremendous size of the world, which they had previously conceived of as touchingly manageable. It oppresses them to realize that they have been visible to people all along, perhaps unattractively so, without their knowledge or consent. A disheartening number of them refuse to use their new vision…and lapse into apathy and despair…. > > On the other hand, many newly sighted people speak well of the world, and teach us how dull is our own vision. To one patient, a human hand, unrecognized, is “something bright and then holes.”… A little girl visits a garden, “She is greatly astonished, and can scarcely be persuaded to answer, stands speechless in front of the tree, which she only names on taking hold of it, and then as ‘the tree with the lights in it.’”…One girl was eager to tell her blind friend that “men do not look like trees at all,” and astounded to discover that every visitor had an utterly different face.\* I don’t know how this report jives with **QtM** ’s claims, above. Do you mean that it is not possible to learn to process visual information later in life, **Quadgop**? ---
**Author:** ![aleong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4af34b/32.png) [@aleong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aleong)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2003, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-blind-person-could-suddenly-see-would-the-visual-world-make-sense-or-not/188987/13 "2003-07-17T17:27:38Z")
As a side note, the suicide of a girl only a week after having her sight restored via an operation inspired the Pang Brothers to direct the Hong Kong horror film “[The Eye](http://www.mediacircus.net/eye.html)”. One of the reasons why the film works is that the protagonist needs to learn how to interpret the images now flooding her brain… some of which are ‘dead people’! ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2003, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-blind-person-could-suddenly-see-would-the-visual-world-make-sense-or-not/188987/14 "2003-07-17T23:19:34Z")
**calmeacham** , maybe the woman you cite wasn’t totally blind from birth. Which is what I suspect for the other cases cited also. As I stated in my initial post, if there is some ability for the eyes to see well enough to discriminate shapes in early life, the brain will develop ability to process some sight. Many people who are called blind, or “legally blind” are not totally without sight, or have not been sight-impaired all their lives. ---
**Author:** ![Super\_Gnat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Super\_Gnat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Super_Gnat)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2003, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-blind-person-could-suddenly-see-would-the-visual-world-make-sense-or-not/188987/15 "2003-07-18T04:30:58Z")
The Dillard excerps sound familiar (though for some reason I recall the book being in nonfiction; perhaps it was cited by something else or I remember wrong). Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![Teelo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8491ac/32.png) [@Teelo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Teelo)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2003, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-blind-person-could-suddenly-see-would-the-visual-world-make-sense-or-not/188987/16 "2003-07-18T06:25:53Z")
This is definetly one of the most interesting threads I have ever read. The eye has always facinated me. I once read in a National Geographic about different sorts of blindness. Some “blind” people cant see motion. Can anyone even fathom that? That they can see…but cant see moving images… The women who had this, had to put marker lines on the inside of a coffee cup to know when to stop pouring into it. Again, hard to understand. I should definetly find this magazine again. ---
**Author:** ![Pavlos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ac8455/32.png) [@Pavlos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pavlos)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2003, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-blind-person-could-suddenly-see-would-the-visual-world-make-sense-or-not/188987/17 "2003-07-18T06:35:59Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Tomcat \* > \*\*Not only does your brain have to learn how to process images, it also has to learn how to filter the light This is why certain hallucinogens affect us the way they do. They temporarilly allow us to ‘see’ things our brains normally filter out. \*\* ala pink elephants? ---
**Author:** ![Tomcat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Tomcat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tomcat)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2003, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-blind-person-could-suddenly-see-would-the-visual-world-make-sense-or-not/188987/18 "2003-07-18T15:53:58Z")
No, **Pavlos** , because pink elephants don’t exist. I’m talking about things that exist- wavelengths of light - that we normally filter out. This approaches the question of “How do I know that the Red you see is the Red I see?” Or, maybe, do hallucinagens PUT images in our minds, or do they take away filters so we see things differently. Yes, some drugs do make you see pink elephants, but that is different from looking at a blank wall and seeing colors and shades that you didn’t before. Why did I clearly see etching in the candle while high, but not sober? My brain processed that input differently. Why? -Tcat ---
**Author:** ![Pavlos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ac8455/32.png) [@Pavlos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pavlos)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2003, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-blind-person-could-suddenly-see-would-the-visual-world-make-sense-or-not/188987/19 "2003-07-18T17:16:15Z")
No, you got the wrong end of the stick. I was trying to say that hallucinations that some people see are things that are really there, but outside of our visual spectrum. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2003, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-blind-person-could-suddenly-see-would-the-visual-world-make-sense-or-not/188987/20 "2003-07-18T19:02:58Z")
> [@](#): > > Some “blind” people cant see motion. Can anyone even fathom that? That they can see…but cant see moving images… > The women who had this, had to put marker lines on the inside of a coffee cup to know when to stop pouring into it. Again, hard to understand. Well, LSD affects your ability to distinguish moving from non-moving things, especially at certain focal lengths (objects 5-10 feet away, especially if textured or patterned, will often appear to be covered with a mass of slowly squirming/swarming insect-sized thingies…can give a few folks the shudders and is responsible for many stories about LSD and “hallucinating” … it’s really more an illusion than an hallucination, you still tend to see it long after you’re so accustomed to it that it doesn’t bother you and it’s very limited and specific in nature). Meanwhile, certainly some animals are much more attuned to movement than to shape (so if you stand very still they don’t see you). So there must be differences in how the brain recognizes shapes and how the brain recognizes movement, and you can be impaired in one but not the other, or have sharpened perception in one and not the other. And color, as **Tomcat** draws our attention to, would be a third variable probably processed in yet another part of the brain. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-blind-person-could-suddenly-see-would-the-visual-world-make-sense-or-not/188987.md?page=2)