They are learning something.
Learning areas. Some area is involved in vision, or maybe even involved somehow in recognition of horizontal lines.
Areas associated with some function, that's what we know from ablation.
But it is all a stalling tactic.
We already know the brain is involved.
The question is: How is it doing it? How is it involved?
Not where is it doing it.
Since we know something about local brain function when we are presented with a subject which had that function who now hasn't got that part we can confirm what is known and modify what is changed from what we know.
Funny thing happened on the way to knowing how parts of the brain function is that when something goes wrong other parts of the brain associated with the parts gone wrong change their sources to those that remain to do some of the things that the missing part provided. Blind people use visual cortex to provide location information available from auditory and somesthetic inputs. Wow. Who'da thunk?
On a very simplistic level the process of lateral inhibition, negative polarization of cells nearby those stimulated increase target precision is one of those things we know, have known since the 19th century, and know it now as a fundamental process of sensory conduction.
Another basic is association. Information in any channel is associated with similar information previously in that channel and with similar information in other channels. Its another principle of brain functional organization we've known since the 19th century. Where did you get your education anyway.
