Patients who are blind in one side of their visual field benefit from presentation of sounds on the affected side.

People rely on their eyes for most things they do – yet the information provided by our visual sensing system is often distorted, unreliable and subject to illusion.

Studying a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease, neuroscientists at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen have observed correlations between increases in both soluble and plaque-forming beta-amyloid – a protein implicated in the disease process – and dysfunctional developments on several levels: individual cortical neurons, neuronal circuits, sensory cognition, and behavior.

It's a chilling thought--losing the sense of sight because of severe injury or damage to the brain's visual cortex. But, is it possible to train a damaged or injured brain to "see" again after such a catastrophic injury?

If you are looking for a particular object — say a yellow pencil — on a cluttered desk, how does your brain work to visually locate it?