Perceiving the world without any visual cue in total absence of vision must often be based on verbal descriptions of events (for instance, following cricket on the radio). Congenitally blind people are therefore likely to depend more on memory in general, and on verbal memory in particular, to interact with the world. Visual cortex in blind subjects is also recruited for auditory processing and for nonvisual cognitive functions, providing further demonstrations that visual cortices can be reorganized to mediate nonvisual functions in the blind.