It may seem self-evident that a perceptually enriched environment is intellectually – and thus creatively – stimulating, and many creative people have pointed to the importance of diverse experiences in their own creative efforts. Beginning at the perceptual stage – and with the most obvious example – a blind photographer cannot see the subject matter needed to create the photograph.
Perhaps slightly less obvious, but in a similar way, a musician who can no longer hear or interpret the sound of music cannot accurately modulate their performance, resulting in its degradation. Such was the case with a professional opera singer I saw who suffered a strategically placed stroke in a brain region that helped him to interpret musical sounds. Without that skill, his ability to modulate his pitch and dynamic range was severely impaired, and he was unable to perform all but the most "forgiving" arias.
By Dr. Richard Caselli
Both of those examples reflected someone with normally developed perceptual skills that were secondarily lost in adulthood. But there are many individuals who either never develop certain perceptual skills (such as those born blind, deaf, or, in less common cases, numb [Disorders of Tactile Function, in "The Parietal Lobes," (New York: Hafner Publishing Co., 1971, pp. 86-155)]) or who lose their sensory perception during early childhood. Brain development depends on sensory input, so that if vision is never sensed or is lost early enough in life, then those regions of the brain intended for vision do not develop normally. Instead of sensing vision, they may be activated by other surviving senses, heightening one’s sensory acuity to touch or hearing.
Accomplished artists such as Ray Charles, Jose Feliciano, and Andrea Bocelli prove that blindness does not preclude artistic achievement. Ludwig van Beethoven’s loss of hearing occurred before he completed his Ninth Symphony, one of the greatest musical works ever produced.
It may be more surprising to note what is creatively possible even under the most extreme conditions of sensory deprivation. Helen Keller was only 1 1/2 years old when an unknown illness, possibly meningitis, rendered her blind and deaf. She recounted her experience in her autobiography: "One brief spring, musical with the song of robin and mockingbird, one summer rich in fruit and roses, one autumn of gold and crimson sped by and left their gifts at the feet of an eager, delighted child. Then, in the dreary month of February, came the illness which closed my eyes and ears ... I fancy I still have confused recollections of that illness ... the agony and the bewilderment with which I awoke after a tossing half sleep, and turned my eyes, so dry and hot, to the wall, away from the once-loved light, which came to me dim and yet more dim each day ... Gradually I got used to the silence and darkness that surrounded me and forgot that it had ever been different ..." ("The Story of My Life" [New York: Modern Library, 2003, p. 7]).
In losing her vision and hearing, Helen Keller was rendered unable to develop normal communication and social skills until her remarkable teacher Anne Mansfield Sullivan, discovered another avenue for sensory input, that of touch. Touch by itself is a difficult channel through which to forge communication and social skills but was Helen’s only option. Through a carefully formulated strategy, dexterously executed, with patience and perseverance by Anne, Helen Keller did eventually find an avenue of escape from her profound disability. Her success was so great that she went on to attend Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Mass., graduated with honors, and became an accomplished author.
Apart from Anne, Helen’s other great fortune was that her parents were able to provide her with private teachers, so that she was given the chance to have an Anne Sullivan at all. While that alone did not guarantee success, it was, like the availability of a piano for a biologically determined musical prodigy, a necessary prerequisite. Had Helen been born into poverty, her story would have had a very different ending, resulting in no story at all. And many children today who are born with perceptual disabilities have a creative disadvantage when compared with their nondisabled peers, particularly when circumstances do not provide for their special needs
Many neurologic disorders that are acquired later in life, such as stroke, traumatic brain injury, brain tumors, multiple sclerosis, and Alzheimer’s disease, can impair our previously attained creative abilities by damaging our perceptual skills in a more cognitive fashion. Agnosia is a perceptual disturbance in which we do not grasp the meaning of what we perceive. Prosopagnosia, a form of visual agnosia that impairs our ability to recognize familiar faces results from damage to the inferior temporal lobes, particularly in the right cerebral hemisphere. A prosopagnosic can discern a face is that of an attractive young woman with ruby red lipstick, but may fail to identify Marilyn Monroe. Achromatopsia is a visual problem in which patients lose the ability to perceive color. Artists who have developed achromatopsia, not surprisingly, have diminished ability to use color in their paintings (Neuropsychologia 2004;42:1568-83).