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| Another Vision Made Possible by the Information Age |
"Prakash," the Sanskrit word for light, signifies both bringing sight to children and illuminating scientists' understanding of brain development.
Giving eyesight to a young boy apparently born with blindness in India has given rise to new findings in brain plasticity. It shows that a young brain can acquire new functions if initiated.
This is how the story goes. A baby was born blind in a small Indian village. His parents assumed he was just another victim of the family curse, destined to a life without sight like his sister, father and grandmother before him.
Like many others in India, the parents resigned to his fate.
They sent him to an institution for the blind
when he was just four years old.
Miraculously, the boy's world changed when
health workers visited his school to conduct screening tests
and determined his eyes were treatable.
He soon underwent surgery and at last began to see. This discovery challenged established views on brain plasticity and lead to new approaches for children with deafness or autism.
It reveals how the brain learns to process color, shape and movement. Different parts of the brain must engage to process a vision. Kids' eyesight can still be changed after age 6 or 7. The brain has significant capacity to "catch up" in interpreting color and light signals to recognize objects, regardless of whether the window was dark during the early stages of development.
Additional tests showed that motion aids the brain's ability to distinguish individual objects. For example, the participants could see a triangle displayed among scattered lines more readily when it constantly moved than when it was stationary. Another potential application is with deaf children. "Exactly the same sort of idea would apply to deafness as to blindness: Would the brain of a child who has been deaf from birth be able to acquire auditory processing capabilities, would he be able to acquire spoken language even if he is treated several years after his birth?," Sinha wonders.
For the blind boy who discover 20% sight age seven is nothing less than a miracle. For him, and a growing number of Project Prakash patients, the light now glows brightly.
As for the children who are currently untreatable because of damaged eye structures, Sinha dreams that one day they will gain eyesight as well. "
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