Milena Canning and Neuropsychologist Jody Culham <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Neuroscientists at Western University’s Brain and Mind Institute have confirmed and detailed a rare case of a blind woman able to see objects – but only if in motion.<\/p>\n
A team led by neuropsychologist Jody Culham has conducted the most extensive analysis and brain mapping to date of a blind patient, to help understand the remarkable vision of a 48-year-old Scottish woman, Milena Canning.<\/p>\n
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Milena Canning and Neuropsychologist Jody Culham <\/p>\n
Canning lost her sight 18 years ago after a respiratory infection and series of strokes. Months after emerging blind from an eight-week coma, she was surprised to see the glint of a sparkly gift bag, like a flash of green lightning.<\/p>\n
Then she began to perceive, sporadically, other moving things: her daughter’s ponytail bobbing when she walked, but not her daughter’s face; rain dripping down a window, but nothing beyond the glass; and water swirling down a drain, but not a tub already full with water.<\/p>\n
Glaswegian ophthalmologist Gordon Dutton referred Canning to the Brain and Mind Institute in London, Canada, where tests by Culham’s team included functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to examine the real-time structure and workings of her brain.<\/p>\n
They determined Canning has a rare phenomenon called Riddoch syndrome – in which a blind person can consciously see an object if moving but not if stationary.
“She is missing a piece of brain tissue about the size of an apple at the back of her brain – almost her entire occipital lobes, which process vision,” says Culham, a professor in the Department of Psychology and Graduate Program in Neuroscience.<\/p>\n
“In Milena’s case, we think the ‘super-highway’ for the visual system reached a dead end. But rather than shutting down her whole visual system, she developed some ‘back roads’ that could bypass the superhighway to bring some vision – especially motion – to other parts of the brain.”<\/p>\n
In essence, Canning’s brain is taking unexpected, unconventional detours around damaged pathways.<\/p>\n
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During the study, Canning was able to recognize the motion, direction, size and speed of balls rolled towards her; and to command her hand to open, intercept and grab them at exactly the right time. She could navigate around chairs.<\/p>\n
Yet she inconsistently identified an object’s colour, and was able only half the time to detect whether someone’s hand in front of her showed thumb-up or thumb-down.<\/p>\n
“This work may be the richest characterization ever conducted of a single patient’s visual system,” says Culham. “She has shown this very profound recovery of vision, based on her perception of motion.”<\/p>\n
The research shows the remarkable plasticity of the human brain in finding work-arounds after catastrophic injuries. And it suggests conventional definitions of ‘sight’ and ‘blindness’ are fuzzier than previously believed.<\/p>\n
“Patients like Milena give us a sense of what is possible and, even more importantly, they give us a sense of what visual and cognitive functions go together,” Culham says.<\/p>\n
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Milena Canning’s brain compared with a regular person’s brain of the same age <\/p>\n
For Canning, the research at BMI helps explain more about what she perceives and how her brain is continuing to change. She is able to navigate around chairs, can see a bright-shirted soccer goalie and can see steam rising from her morning cup of coffee, for example.<\/p>\n
“I can’t see like normal people see or like I used to see. The things I’m seeing are really strange. There is something happening and my brain is trying to rewire itself or trying different pathways,” Canning says.<\/p>\n
The research is newly published in the journal Neuropsychologia.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n yogaesoteric \n Neuroscientists at Western University’s Brain and Mind Institute have confirmed and detailed a rare case of a blind woman able to see objects – but only if in motion. A team led by neuropsychologist Jody Culham has conducted the most extensive analysis and brain mapping to date of a blind patient, to help understand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1368],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature-17610-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23010\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
January 21, 2020<\/strong>\n <\/p>\n
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