Brain doesn’t sort by visual cues alone

Blind and sighted subjects sort the living from the nonliving in the same way

The bird and the feather apparently do not flock together, at least not in the visual processing centers of the brain. That holds true even in blind people, new research indicates.

INNATE ABILITY Thinking about nonliving objects activates the same area of a key vision pathway in both sighted and congenitally blind volunteers, suggesting that people are born with the ability to distinguish living things from nonliving things.