Dermo-optical perception
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Dermo-optical perception (DOP) refers to the supposed ability to see without using the eyes (as distinct from blindsight). Typically, people who claim to have dermo-optical perception claim to be able to see using the skin of their fingers or hands. People who claim to have DOP often demonstrate it by reading while blindfolded. Dermo-optical perception is sometimes referred to as bio-introscopy.
Although in the past, particularly in the 1960's and 1970's, DOP had been discredited as pseudoscience, and explainable by the use of magicians' tricks, recent research on synaesthesia in the blind has revived interest in the phenomenon.
The methods now used to study perception, which include imaging, have reframed the DOP phenomenon in a neuroscientific context as blind and double blind experiments are now theoretically possible. The paradigm pertaining to DOP in science now rests solely on the phenomenon whereby one who is limited in his sight can distinguish between two stimuli that are usually distinguished by vision alone.
