Abstract
Individuals who are blind early in life show cross-modal plasticity – responses to auditory and tactile stimuli within regions of occipital cortex that are purely visual in the normally sighted. If vision is restored later in life, as occurs in a small number of sight recovery individuals, this cross-modal plasticity persists, even while some visual responsiveness is regained. Here I describe the relationship between cross-modal responses and persisting residual vision. Our results suggest the intriguing possibility that the dramatic changes in function that are observed as a result of early blindness are implemented in the absence of major changes in neuroanatomy at either the micro or macro scale: analogous to reformatting a Windows computer to Linux.