Last fall I was blind, if only for an hour. I had gone to “Dialog in the Dark,” a performance that gives you a brief but lasting glimpse of what life might be like without your eyes. It’s so dark in the exhibition space that you can have your eyes wide open and not see your hand in front of your face. After the performance, I stepped into the light, and my brain started processing all that assaulting visual information lickety-split. Thanks, brain.

Sometimes, though, your brain has to learn how to see. It’s a weird thought, like learning how to breathe, but that’s the deal for formerly blind people whose sight is restored. How does your gray matter accomplish this monumental task? A bunch of MIT neurophysicists have tried to figure it out. For their experiment, they found three participants ranging in age from 3 to 29 who had regained their sight.