Old Brain, New Tricks

By Cara Feinberg
Source: Boston Globe

Esref Armagan is a 52-year-old Turkish painter who has been blind in both eyes since the day he was born. He has never seen a coffee cup, a toothbrush, an elephant, or a tree-lined street, but he can draw them each, from any perspective, with or without shadows depending on the time of day.

His portrait of President Clinton, which he painted from an embossed photograph, looks, well, like Clinton-complete with grey hair and bulbous nose-and though Armagan has never had an art lesson, the streets he paints stretch into the distance as converging parallel lines.

For years, Armagan has been a phenomenon in the art world, displaying his work in museums around the globe. But it was not until two summers ago, when he traveled to Boston, that scientists were able to study precisely how he generates such images.

Their hope was that he might teach them something about neural ''plasticity"--the brain's ability to reorganize its functions based on new information and experiences. If Armagan had never seen with his eyes, how had his brain adapted to give him visual representations of the world, and more importantly, what could it reveal about brain adaptation in general?

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