The shutting out of surrounding objects, and the concentration of the whole attention . . . produces a dreamlike exaltation . . . in which we seem to leave the body behind us and sail into one strange scene after another, like disembodied spirits. This sort of cross-modal activation may underlie the fact that some blind people, like Dennis Shulman,“see” Braille as they read it with their finger. This may be more than just an illusion or a fanciful metaphor; it may be a reflection of what is actually happening in his brain, for there is good evidence that reading Braille can cause strong activation of the visual parts of the cortex, as Sadato, Pascual-Leone, et al. have reported. Such activation, even in the absence of any input from the retina, may constitute a crucial part of the neural basis for the mind’s eye. Abramson, David H., ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5 Dear Dr. Sacks,