Conventional balance tests such as electronystagmography and videonystagmography, which are vision-dependant, are not practical in blind patients. Instead, vestibular evoked myogenic potential, not needing any vision, seems to be a more appropriate test for evaluating the vestibular system, in these patients. This study aimed to assess the prevalence and the latencies of p13 and n23 waves among congenitally blind and sighted participants evaluated by vestibular evoked myogenic potential. In a cross-sectional study, vestibular evoked myogenic potential was recorded for 20 sighted and 20 congenitally blind subjects, aged 18 to 30 years old, using 500 Hz-tone bursts (95 dBnHL). Vestibular evoked myogenic potentials responses were present in all (100%) of the participants. Considering the results of the both ears, there was no significant difference between mean p13 and n23 latencies of the two groups (p>0.05). Formation of vestibular evoked myogenic potentials reflex arc and neural pathway in congenitally blind patients is similar to sighted individuals; hence, the development of this pathway is independent of the visual system. Vestibular evoked myogenic potentials test is a useful test to assess vestibular function of the blinds.

The transfer of the concept of film to the blind is a multidimensional phenomenon. This biological phenomenon, with the help of its related meanings, determines how a blind cinema audience will understand and interpret the reality of such an event. The transmission of the concept of film to blind people depends on the methods and knowledge that are used to achieve this better. Oral description is one of these methods. This phenomenological study is an attempt to explain the transfer of meaning in the lived experience of congenitally blind people interested in film and cinema. In this study, the method of interpretive phenomenology has been used. This research was conducted in 1400 on 25 congenitally blind people in Tehran, Shiraz, Rasht and Yazd who were interested in cinema for the blind and watching films with oral descriptions. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. The interviews were analyzed by Van Manen's phenomenological approach after implementation. Six main themes of superior sense, emotional communication, vocal whiteness, optimal narration, speech disorder and deficiency were extracted. The results showed that the lived experience of the blind from the transfer of the concept is unique in the audio film. Therefore, understanding the complexities of the experiences of the blind, considering the need of the blind audience to show and describe the film, training descriptors or narrators and paying attention to the abilities, limitations, beliefs and attitudes of the blind to benefit more from this cultural product It is essential.

Congenitally blind people always need to find a solution and resort to compatible factors in the environment in order to understand their surroundings, gain physical and social independence. In order to understand the environment, in addition to the external senses, they resort to the esoteric senses, memory, imagination and mental imagery. Perception, therefore, for these people is a kind of knowledge about the outside world that arises from the combination of sensory information and the mechanism of thinking and can be different from objective reality.The objectives of this study is answering the question of what process the perception of the environment by congenitally blind people is based on? The results show that there are quantitative and qualitative differences in the mental imagery of the blind and visually impaired. Blind people are able to perceive objects directly in space due to their ability to combine emotions. Having a clear picture of the environment enables them to move in it. The blind are not much different from the sighted in visualizing the movement that takes place in relation to physical perception. Blind people also use tactile information to perceive information in nearby spaces, and use auditory imaging to capture distant situations with the help of sound reflections and enhance auditory focus. Therefore, in order to understand the environment for all people, especially blind people who have no visual experience, it is necessary to use physical, auditory, olfactory, thermal, tactile and the like changes in designing and planning the physical environment to increase the quality of understanding the environment. This enables the active presence of blind people in public spaces in order to create equal opportunities and unhindered, independent, comfortable and safe access to the physical environment.

Theory of mind is one of the most important aspects of cognitive faculty. The theory of mind is impaired in individuals who suffer from mental disorders like autistic children. The ‘autistic-like’ behaviors also have been reported in the congenitally blind children. This study was conducted to examine the presence or absence of theory of mind and its function in congenitally blind children.

A number of 20 individuals containing 10 bilingual congenitally blind children from Baghcheban elementary school of Ilam city as a case group and 10 sighted ones as a control group were selected. Three kinds of false belief cognitive tests appropriate for the congenitally blind children were designed. The collected data were analyzed using one sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov test, independent t-test along with Levenn test and one-way and two-way Analysis of Variance.

Considering the performance of congenitally blind children in false belief tasks, the blindness just had effect on the story narration task (P<0.05(, while it did not have any effect on the two other tasks. The same performance of the male and female subjects indicated that gender did not have any impact on the development of the theory of mind (P>0.05).

The findings showed only the story narration task was affected by blindness, because this task was more dependent on visual sense. Therefore, blindness results in delay in evolution of theory of mind. To fix this delay, the congenitally blind children should be exposed to further tactile and olfactory inputs.

This study was carried out to clarify the potential health-risk and to determinant the prevalence of antenatal rubella infection in North-Central, Nigeria. A descriptive cross-sectional survey was carried out among pregnant women to establish the knowledge, attitude and practices with regards to antenatal rubella infection in early pregnancy in Ilorin. A total of 92 subjects were recruited by simple random selection from the antenatal clinics of the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital, Nigeria. Results showed that congenitally defective eyes or ears were regarded as a greater burden to bear than a congenitally defective heart. Pregnant mothers are more likely to abort a congenitally defective fetus before term. Multigravid pregnant women are more likely to have an abortion (X2 = 12.48, df = 4, p = 0.014), just as married pregnant women were more likely to abort a congenitally defective fetus before term (X2 = 23.64, df = 4, p = 0.0). It is a general assumption that Nigeria today is majorly rural, therefore, health educational activities for prompt antenatal reporting in sub-urban Ilorin, and Nigeria as a whole, may be a relevant intervention for pregnant women.

Hypodontia or congenitally missing teeth is among dental anomalies with different prevalence in each region. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of congenitally missing permanent teeth in Iranian population. A descriptive, retrospective and cross‑sectional study was done. Panoramic radiographs of 2422 Iranian patients (1539 girls and 883 boys), 7‑25 years old, were collected. The radiographs were studied for evidence of congenitally missing teeth. Data were analyzed using Paired t‑test, Mann‑Whitney test, Fisher exact test and Chi‑square test (α = 0.05). Prevalence of congenitally missing teeth was totally 45.7% and 34.8% for third molars. The most frequent congenitally missing teeth was mandibular second premolars (23.34%) followed by maxillary second premolars (22.02%). Upper jaw showed significantly higher number of congenitally missing teeth (P value < 0.001). According to Chi‑square test, congenital missing teeth was found approximately 10.9% in both females and males and there were no statistically significant difference between sexes (P = 0.19). The prevalence of congenitally missing teeth (CMT) in Iranian permanent dentition was 10.9%. The most common congenitally missing teeth were mandibular second premolar fallowed by maxillary second premolars.

Given the importance of sight, which is one of the most important human senses regarding receiving environmental data, and its fundamental role in the recognition and processing of many behaviors, such as observing movements, events, and emotional states in individuals, as well as tracking and orientation, it should be expected that the performance of the blind in the process of language acquisition and learning cognitive skills was different in many aspects when compared to sighted individuals. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate and compare the metaphorical concepts of love in the daily speech of Kurdish-Persian bilingual sighted and blind adults. To this end, research data was gathered using interviews with 50 bilingual Kurdish-Persian informants aged 18-70 from the Ilam province.
Data analysis was done using descriptive and inferential statistics methods in SPSS software version 22. The results showed that, regarding the frequency of metaphors, there were no significant differences between the performance of the blind and the sighted adults. However, the frequency of the utilized sensory sources for the source domains of love was different in the speech of the two groups, where the blind used the sense of hearing significantly more than the sighted people to express love (P<0.05). Moreover, the subjects used certain source domains to express love which seemed to reflect cultural influences. In addition, the results of this study can lead to more interaction of blind subjects with society through solving their language problems. 

Going to the cinema is one of the needs of the blind population of Iran. Due to the limitations of the blind, these people use this cultural opportunity in a limited way and with special conditions. The purpose of this study is to understand the meanings of the lived experience of the blind from the cinema. To interpret the experience, Van Menen's Method of interpretive phenomenology was used. Targeted and snowball sampling was performed with semi-structured interviews until theoretical data saturation. Finally, the lived experience of 25 congenitally blind people who go to cinema was analyzed. Data collection tools are observation and interview. Findings of the study includes 5 themes, watching a movie, multidimensional pleasure, screaming, making a dream come true and taking a step forward. Sofar no qualitative research has been done on the blind of the cinema audience and their lived experience in an interpretive way. The results of the research show that the ritual of going to the cinema can be a step towards realizing the dream of the blind in equipping ordinary cinemas; they feel like they belong and enjoy this solidarity. But the life description, along with the release of the film as an unusual method, causes many problems in conveying the meaning of the images to the blind. Filmmakers have no knowledge of the principles of description and have not been trained. Participants also called for cinemas to be equipped with sound systems for the blind and to achieve the goals of the inclusive community.

One of the most important issues in blind people is their memory and auditory processing. The purpose of this research was to systematically review the researches conducted in the field of auditory processing and types of memory of blind people compared to sighted people. The method of this research was a systematic review of 26 articles in the years 1388-1395 and 2004-2022 in the field of research related to memory and auditory processing of blind people compared to sighted people using Google Scholar, Eric, EBSCO, Science Direct, Scopus, PubMed, as well as Magiran, SID, Comprehensive Humanities Portal, Iran Doc, Noormags with the keywords of blindness, visual impairment, auditory processing, sighted and congenitally blind were used and selected for systematic reviews. The findings showed that out of 1381 sample groups, 48 percent were blind and 715 sighted participated. 30% of the studies in the field of short-term memory, 33% in the field of auditory-verbal memory, 15% in working memory, 11% in spatial memory, 7% in olfactory memory and 4% in numerical memory compared blind and sighted people. The findings indicated that, in general, in short-term memory, auditory-verbal memory, and working memory, the performance of blind people was better than that of sighted people. In the field of spatial memory, the results were inconsistent, and there was no significant difference between the olfactory memory of blind and sighted people. In terms of numerical memory, the performance of sighted people was better. In general, it is better to conduct more research focusing on one type of memory so that all aspects of it can be clarified.

Most sighted children spontaneously maintain an adequate degree of physical fitness during the course of normal daily activities. However, blind people are reported to be significantly below the physical fitness norms. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of eight weeks of rock climbing on cervical vestibular evoked myogenic potential (cVEMP), balance, body composition, and functional index in congenitally blind and sighted female students.
In this semi-experimental study, 10 sighted and 10 blind girls aged 7-12 years were trained rock climbing for eight weeks with three sessions per week, and each session spanned 30 to 45 minutes. cVEMP latencies, dynamic/static balance, right-hand power, leg strength, and body fat percentage were recorded before and after training.
Cervical vestibular evoked myogenic potential in both blind and sighted groups did not change significantly. Dynamic balance, static balance, right-hand power, and leg strength increased significantly in both the groups (p>0.05), whereas the body fat percentage significantly decreased in both groups.
Eight weeks of rock climbing training led to a decrease in body fat percentage and a significant increase in the functional index in sighted and blind children. This suggests that rock climbing practice can be used as a proper workout protocol for maintaining health and increasing the balance and physical strength of these individuals.