Seeing Fingertips

Soviet Psychiatrist Isaac Goldberg could well understand his colleagues' doubts, but he insisted that he really did have an epileptic patient who could read ordinary print with her fingertips. To prove it, he had Rosa Kuleshova, 22, admitted to the Sverdlov Clinic for Nervous Disorders. There before a skeptical audience, Dr. Goldberg blindfolded Rosa and had the blindfold checked. Then Rosa opened a book at random, passed the fingertips of her right hand lightly over the page, and fluently read the text aloud. She did the same with a newspaper. Handed a snapshot, Rosa stroked the surface and said: "What a cute little girl with a ribbon in her hair and her face tilted upward!"

Several members of Rosa's family, in the Urals town of Nizhni Tagil (pop. 338,000) were blind, Dr. Goldberg explained. Rosa herself learned to read Braille as well as the printed word, and made no sharp distinction in her mind between the two kinds of reading. Her senses of touch and sight had become practically interchangeable. Had Rosa developed her Braille touch so highly that she could feel the shapes of characters in letterpress printing? With a sheet of glass over a printed page, Rosa could no longer read fine print, but she could still make out headline type in strong light.

Rosa can also "feel"' colors. White, she says, is smooth; red is coarse-grained; and blue is wavy. Again determined to rule out a reaction to textures, the neurologists tested her with colored light. They shone a red light on a light green book, making it look blue. Rosa called it blue. When the red light was switched off, and the green looked green again, the blindfolded Rosa expressed astonishment that the book could change color.

Though Rosa's brain-wave pattern changes when she is reading with her fingers, neurologists have not yet been able to find any connection between her strange faculty and her epilepsy. The Russian experts can only assume that Rosa Kuleshova has in her fingertips a network of fine nerve endings that are sensitive to light.

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