At three years of age, May's vision had still not reached the acuity of an adult person, so his brain was still not completely exposed to all possible clarity of images and light of the environment. This made it difficult for Michael to lead a normal daily life. Cohen et al. (1997) suggested that early blindness causes a poor development of the visual cortex with the result of a decrease in somatosensory development. This study proposed that Michael's long-term blindness affects his ability to distinguish in between faces of males and females, and to recognize pictures and images. In spite of the surgery on his right eye, his newly regained vision, after blindness of forty years, is not fully recovered. Thinus-Blanc and Gaunet (1997) suggest that early blinded people show limited ability in spatial representation. Michael still struggles to identify pictures or illustrations. The impairment of his visual cortex, due to the loss of his vision at a very early age, resulted in visual cortex cells that are not used to the stimuli in his surroundings. Cohen et al. (1997) proposed that in their early age, blinded subjects developed strong motivations to tactile discrimination tasks. May's early blindness benefited him so far; he developed very precise senses of hearing and touch.