[blindza] Article/page: 'I can hear a building over there:'

From: "Jacob Kruger" <jacob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "NAPSA Blind" <blind@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2014 13:12:59 +0200
Interesting - not too new, but, sort of proof that echo location is 
feasible/can work for at least some guys - see article/page contents below.

Jacob Kruger
Blind Biker
Skype: BlindZA
"Roger Wilco wants to welcome you...to the space janitor's closet..."
---page contents---
'I can hear a building over there:' Blind echolocation experts use 'visual' 
part of their brain to process the clicks and echoes

Date:
May 26, 2011

Source:
University of Western Ontario

Summary:
Researchers have recently shown that blind echolocation experts use what is 
normally the "visual" part of their brain to process the clicks and echoes. The 
study is the first to investigate the neural basis of natural human 
echolocation.

Credit: Lore Thaler et al; doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0020162

It is common knowledge that bats and dolphins echolocate, emitting bursts of 
sounds and then listening to the echoes that bounce back to detect objects. 
What is less well-known is that people can echolocate too. In fact, there are 
blind people who have learned to make clicks with their mouths and to use the 
returning echoes from those clicks to sense their surroundings. Some of these 
individuals are so adept at echolocation that they can use this skill to 
navigate unknown environments, and participate in activities such as mountain 
biking and basketball.

Researchers at The University of Western Ontario's Centre for Brain and Mind 
(London, Ontario, Canada) have recently shown that blind echolocation experts 
use what is normally the 'visual' part of their brain to process the clicks and 
echoes. The study, appearing this month in the scientific journal PLoS ONE, is 
the first to investigate the neural basis of natural human echolocation.

Senior author Mel Goodale, Canada Research Chair in Visual Neuroscience, and 
Director of the Centre for Brain and Mind, says, "It is clear echolocation 
enables blind people to do things otherwise thought to be impossible without 
vision and can provide blind and visually-impaired people with a high degree of 
independence."

Goodale and his team of researchers first made recordings of the clicks and 
their very faint echoes using tiny microphones in the ears of the blind 
echolocators as they stood outside and tried to identify different objects such 
as a car, a flag pole, and a tree. The researchers then played the recorded 
sounds back to the echolocators while their brain activity was being measured 
in Western's state-of-the-art 3T functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) 
brain scanner.

Remarkably, when the echolocation recordings were played back to the blind 
experts, not only did they perceive the objects based on the echoes, but they 
also showed activity in those areas of their brain that normally process visual 
information in sighted people. Most interestingly, the brain areas that process 
auditory information were no more activated by sound recordings of outdoor 
scenes containing echoes than they were by sound recordings of outdoor scenes 
with the echoes removed.

When the same experiment was carried out with sighted control people who did 
not echolocate, these individuals could not perceive the objects, and neither 
did their brain show any echo-related activity, suggesting visual brain areas 
play an important role for echolocation in blind people.

According to Goodale, this research will provide a deeper understanding of 
brain function, particularly how the senses are processed and what happens 
neurologically when one sense is lost.

source URL:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110525181420.htm
[blindza] Article/page: 'I can hear a building over there:'

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