Summary: A new study reveals that people who are blind can recognize faces using auditory patterns processed by the fusiform face area, a brain region crucial for face processing in sighted individuals.
The study employed a sensory substitution device to translate images into sound, demonstrating that face recognition in the brain isn’t solely dependent on visual experience. Blind and sighted participants underwent functional MRI scans, showing that the fusiform face area encodes the concept of a face, irrespective of the sensory input.
This discovery challenges the understanding of how facial recognition develops and functions in the brain.
Key Facts:
- The study shows that the fusiform face area in the brain can process the concept of a face through auditory patterns, not just visually.
- Functional MRI scans revealed that this area is active in both blind and sighted individuals during face recognition tasks.
- The research utilized a specialized device to translate visual information into sound, enabling blind participants to recognize basic facial configurations.
Source: Georgetown University Medical Center
Using a specialized device that translates images into sound, Georgetown University Medical Center neuroscientists and colleagues showed that people who are blind recognized basic faces using the part of the brain known as the fusiform face area, a region that is crucial for the processing of faces in sighted people.
The findings appeared in PLOS ONE on November 22, 2023.
“It’s been known for some time that people who are blind can compensate for their loss of vision, to a certain extent, by using their other senses,” says Josef Rauschecker, Ph.D., D.Sc., professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Georgetown University and senior author of this study.
“Our study tested the extent to which this plasticity, or compensation, between seeing and hearing exists by encoding basic visual patterns into auditory patterns with the aid of a technical device we refer to as a sensory substitution device. With the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we can determine where in the brain this compensatory plasticity is taking place.”
Face perception in humans and nonhuman primates is accomplished by a patchwork of specialized cortical regions. How these regions develop has remained controversial. Due to their importance for social behavior, many researchers believe that the neural mechanisms for face recognition are innate in primates or depend on early visual experience with faces.
“Our results from people who are blind implies that fusiform face area development does not depend on experience with actual visual faces but on exposure to the geometry of facial configurations, which can be conveyed by other sensory modalities,” Rauschecker adds.
Paula Plaza, Ph.D., one of the lead authors of the study, who is now at Universidad Andres Bello, Chile, says, “Our study demonstrates that the fusiform face area encodes the ‘concept’ of a face regardless of input channel, or the visual experience, which is an important discovery.”
Six people who are blind and 10 sighted people, who served as control subjects, went through three rounds of functional MRI scans to see what parts of the brain were being activated during the translations from image into sound.
The scientists found that brain activation by sound in people who are blind was found primarily in the left fusiform face area while face processing in sighted people occurred mostly in the right fusiform face area.
“We believe the left/right difference between people who are and aren’t blind may have to do with how the left and right sides of the fusiform area processes faces – either as connected patterns or as separate parts, which may be an important clue in helping us refine our sensory substitution device,” says Rauschecker, who is also co-director of the Center for Neuroengineering at Georgetown University.
Currently, with their device, people who are blind can recognize a basic ‘cartoon’ face (such as an emoji happy face) when it is transcribed into sound patterns. Recognizing faces via sounds was a time-intensive process that took many practice sessions.
Each session started with getting people to recognize simple geometrical shapes, such as horizontal and vertical lines; complexity of the stimuli was then gradually increased, so the lines formed shapes, such as houses or faces, which then became even more complex (tall versus wide houses and happy faces versus sad faces).
Ultimately, the scientists would like to use pictures of real faces and houses in combination with their device, but the researchers note that they would first have to greatly increase the resolution of the device.
“We would love to be able to find out whether it is possible for people who are blind to learn to recognize individuals from their pictures. This may need a lot more practice with our device but now that we’ve pinpointed the region of the brain where the translation is taking place, we may have a better handle on how to fine-tune our processes,” Rauschecker concludes.
In addition to Rauschecker, the other authors at Georgetown University are Laurent Renier and Stephanie Rosemann. Anne G. De Volder, who passed away while this manuscript was in preparation, was at the Neural Rehabilitation Laboratory, Institute of Neuroscience, Université Catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium.
Funding: This work was supported by a grant from the National Eye Institute (#R01 EY018923).
The authors declare no personal financial interests related to the study.
News
How the FDA opens the door to risky chemicals in America’s food supply
Lining the shelves of American supermarkets are food products with chemicals linked to health concerns. To a great extent, the FDA allows food companies to determine for themselves whether their ingredients and additives are [...]
Superbug crisis could get worse, killing nearly 40 million people by 2050
The number of lives lost around the world due to infections that are resistant to the medications intended to treat them could increase nearly 70% by 2050, a new study projects, further showing the [...]
How Can Nanomaterials Be Programmed for Different Applications?
Nanomaterials are no longer just small—they are becoming smart. Across fields like medicine, electronics, energy, and materials science, researchers are now programming nanomaterials to behave in intentional, responsive ways. These advanced materials are designed [...]
Microplastics Are Invading Our Arteries, and It Could Be Increasing Your Risk of Stroke
Higher levels of micronanoplastics were found in carotid artery plaque, especially in people with stroke symptoms, suggesting a potential new risk factor. People with plaque buildup in the arteries of their neck have been [...]
Gene-editing therapy shows early success in fighting advanced gastrointestinal cancers
Researchers at the University of Minnesota have completed a first-in-human clinical trial testing a CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technique to help the immune system fight advanced gastrointestinal (GI) cancers. The results, recently published in The Lancet Oncology, show encouraging [...]
Engineered extracellular vesicles facilitate delivery of advanced medicines
Graphic abstract of the development of VEDIC and VFIC systems for high efficiency intracellular protein delivery in vitro and in vivo. Credit: Nature Communications (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-59377-y. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-59377-y Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have developed a technique [...]
Brain-computer interface allows paralyzed users to customize their sense of touch
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine scientists are one step closer to developing a brain-computer interface, or BCI, that allows people with tetraplegia to restore their lost sense of touch. While exploring a digitally [...]
Scientists Flip a Gut Virus “Kill Switch” – Expose a Hidden Threat in Antibiotic Treatment
Scientists have long known that bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, live in our gut, but exactly what they do has remained elusive. Researchers developed a clever mouse model that can temporarily eliminate these phages [...]
Enhanced Antibacterial Polylactic Acid-Curcumin Nanofibers for Wound Dressing
Background Wound healing is a complex physiological process that can be compromised by infection and impaired tissue regeneration. Conventional dressings, typically made from natural fibers such as cotton or linen, offer limited functionality. Nanofiber [...]
Global Nanomaterial Regulation: A Country-by-Country Comparison
Nanomaterials are materials with at least one dimension smaller than 100 nanometres (about 100,000 times thinner than a human hair). Because of their tiny size, they have unique properties that can be useful in [...]
Pandemic Potential: Scientists Discover 3 Hotspots of Deadly Emerging Disease in the US
Virginia Tech researchers discovered six new rodent carriers of hantavirus and identified U.S. hotspots, highlighting the virus’s adaptability and the impact of climate and ecology on its spread. Hantavirus recently drew public attention following reports [...]
Studies detail high rates of long COVID among healthcare, dental workers
Researchers have estimated approximately 8% of Americas have ever experienced long COVID, or lasting symptoms, following an acute COVID-19 infection. Now two recent international studies suggest that the percentage is much higher among healthcare workers [...]
Melting Arctic Ice May Unleash Ancient Deadly Diseases, Scientists Warn
Melting Arctic ice increases human and animal interactions, raising the risk of infectious disease spread. Researchers urge early intervention and surveillance. Climate change is opening new pathways for the spread of infectious diseases such [...]
Scientists May Have Found a Secret Weapon To Stop Pancreatic Cancer Before It Starts
Researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have found that blocking the FGFR2 and EGFR genes can stop early-stage pancreatic cancer from progressing, offering a promising path toward prevention. Pancreatic cancer is expected to become [...]
Breakthrough Drug Restores Vision: Researchers Successfully Reverse Retinal Damage
Blocking the PROX1 protein allowed KAIST researchers to regenerate damaged retinas and restore vision in mice. Vision is one of the most important human senses, yet more than 300 million people around the world are at [...]
Differentiating cancerous and healthy cells through motion analysis
Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have found that the motion of unlabeled cells can be used to tell whether they are cancerous or healthy. They observed malignant fibrosarcoma [...]
