Nonprofit Defies Conventional Wisdom about Blindness
According to current knowledge in visual neuroscience, if a blind child cannot see by age 8 or so the case is pretty much hopeless. Project Prakash, a not-for-profit set up by a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has disproven that assumption by restoring vision to people in the third decade of life.
Nature reports that Dr. Pawan Sinha’s organization is advancing neuroscience as it provides vision aid:
Originally a humanitarian effort to help blind children in India, under Sinha’s guidance Project Prakash has blossomed into a chance to investigate how we learn to see.
As reported in SciDevNet, Dr. Sinha’s work opens new paths for research in visual neuroscience while it undermines the empirical foundation for “irreversible blindness.”
Sinha’s work with blind people has shown the brain can learn to use what vision it has, and different visual abilities — such as understanding colour and dimension — might develop over different periods of time.
Ganesh must be pleased - Dr. Sinha slid past false obstacles to do good, and became a pioneer in his own discipline.
