From LiveScience: (click for full article)
Individuals who are born deaf use the "hearing" part of their brain to feel touch and to see objects, suggests new research that highlights the plasticity of the human brain.
The new study, detailed online July 11 in The Journal of Neuroscience, shows that deaf people use the so-called auditory cortex to process both touch and visual stimuli much more than hearing individuals do.
"This research shows how the brain is capable of rewiring in dramatic ways," Dr. James Battey, Jr., director of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, said in a statement. "This will be of greatinterest to other researchers who are studying multisensory processing in the brain."
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