Deaf brains are different. The auditory cortex process sound in most people, but in deaf people, the brain reorganizes so that this area processes touch and vision instead. For Scientific American's Mind Matters blog, I wrote about a new study looking at how the brains of deaf people are different from those of hearing people. The design of this study is especially clever, with the authors designing a unique apparatus and making use of a perceptual illusion in order to observe the active brains of deaf and hearing subjects in fMRI machines. Surprisingly, the auditory cortex of deaf people focused on touch even more than vision. This finding could have therapeutic implications, and it also contributes to our understanding of how the brain rewires itself and the different ways in which sensory modalities are intertwined. Read the whole story here.