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New research shows that people who are deaf from an early age have brains that adapt to focus more on what happens in their visual periphery.<\/strong><\/p>\n Scientists found that lifelong deafness changes two of the brain\u2019s main visual processing areas. This helps explain why D\/deaf adults, meaning both those with hearing loss and those who identify with Deaf culture, are often especially good at noticing movement and events outside their direct line of sight.<\/span><\/p>\n This ability may give them an advantage when watching for movement or possible danger around them.<\/span><\/p>\n Researchers from the University of Sheffield and the University of York used functional MRI to study 16 adults with early, profound deafness and 16 hearing adults of similar ages. They mapped how the brain processes different parts of the visual field.<\/span><\/p>\n The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that D\/deaf participants showed more brain activity related to far-peripheral vision in both the primary visual cortex and the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN), a visual relay structure deep in the brain.<\/span><\/p>\n Importantly, the brain did not just increase its overall visual processing. Instead, researchers saw that more brain resources were used for peripheral vision, while fewer were used for the central visual field.<\/span><\/p>\n Professor Charlotte Codina, who leads orthoptics and ophthalmology at the University of Sheffield, said, \u201cThis study suggests that the brain can profoundly adapt to make the most of its sensory environment, and as a result, deaf people have superior peripheral vision.<\/span><\/p>\n