At three years of age, May's vision had not reached the acuity of an adult; as a consequence, his brain was still not completely exposed to the full extent of clarity in relation to the images and light of the environment. Such impairment led to difficulties with regard to normal daily life. Cohen et al. (1997) suggested that early blindness causes the poor development of the visual cortex, with a resulting decrease in somatosensory development. Cohen's study proposed that May's long term blindness affects his ability to distinguish between faces of males and females, and to recognize pictures and images. In spite of the surgery on May's right eye, his newly regained vision is not fully recovered after forty years of blindness. Thinus-Blanc and Gaunet (1997) suggest that people who are blind early in life show a limited ability in the area of spatial representation. The impairment of May's visual cortex, due to the loss of his vision at a very early age, resulted in visual cortex cells that are not accustomed to the stimuli in his surroundings.