Humans use the visual part of their brain when hearing sounds in the dark, even if they were born without sight

In a series of studies published in Current Biology, ("Decoding Natural Sounds in Early 'Visual' Cortex of Congenitally Blind Individuals") an international team of researchers, led by Royal Holloway, explains how scans of brain activity from volunteers who were blindfolded and exposed to bird song, people talking and traffic noise through headphones, used their primary visual cortex to identify the sound.

The same also happened with volunteers who had been blind since birth, and thus showing that neither visual imagery nor visual experience is necessary for the primary visual cortex to decipher sounds.

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