Washington, Aug 14 - New research shows that even in people who have been blind since birth, the brain still separates living and non-living objects.

'If both sighted people and people with blindness process the same ideas in the same parts of the brain, then it follows that visual experience is not necessary in order for those aspects of brain organisation to develop,' said Bradford Mahon, study co-author, University of Rochester.

'We think this means significant parts of the brain are innately structured around a few domains of knowledge that were critical in humans' evolutionary history.'

Previous studies have shown that the sight of certain objects, such as a table or mountain, activate regions of the brain other than the sight of living objects, such as an animal or face - but why the brain would choose to process these two categories differently has remained a mystery, said Mahon.

Since the regions were known to activate when the objects were seen, scientists wondered if something about the visual appearance of the objects determined how the brain would process them.