Case report challenges "critical period" for visual development in children

Investigators working in India have identified a woman who possesses limited visual skills despite having been blind for most of her childhood due to congenital cataracts. Their case report challenges the concept of a "critical period" for visual development in the brains of children, the investigators said.

Pawan Sinha, PhD, and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published the case report of an Indian woman who was born with dense congenital cataracts and was blind until undergoing surgery at age 12. More than 20 years after the surgery, the researchers found that she was able to complete mid- to high-level visual tasks, such as discerning between objects, determining depth, locating faces in a background of natural scenes and matching faces by identity, according to a press release from the Association for Psychological Science.

"These results suggest that the human brain retains an impressive capacity for visual learning well into late childhood. They have implications for current conceptions of cortical plasticity and provide an argument for treating congenital blindness even in older children," the authors said in the case report, which is published in the December issue of Psychological Science.