Research results that the brain is changing so that blind people who perceive the surroundings with sound `` see with sound ''


By

Ryoji Iwata

Some of blind people, like dolphins and bats echolocation Some people are perceived around in (echolocation). Research results have been announced that the visual cortex, which is the part of the brain related to vision, is operating when such a blind person's brain hears sound.

Retinotopic-like maps of spatial sound in primary 'visual' cortex of blind human echolocators | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2019.1910

Neuroscientists See Unique Brain Changes in Blind People Who Learn to 'See' With Sound
https://www.sciencealert.com/blind-people-who-echolocate-can-see-with-sound-using-an-adapted-visual-cortex

Echo location is the act of perceiving the position of surrounding objects using sound reflections, and is especially known as a creature that uses echo location for dolphins and bats. Such echolocation can be learned by training for blind people.

Seven tips to practice ecolocation `` seeing '' the surrounding situation with sound alone-gigazine


by

Oleksandr Pidvalnyi

In 2011, the study of neuroimaging that scans and images the brain for human echolocation began. A 2011 study has already shown that when the brain is stimulated by echolocation, the visual and auditory areas work together, and that echolocation activates only the visual cortex.

The research by Liam Norman and Lohr Sailor, Department of Psychology, Durham University in the UK, is about the brain of a blind person who echoes by ringing his tongue. In the experiment, 5 blind people who acquired echo location, 5 blind people who could not use echo location, and 5 visible people each heard 'resonance sound from objects in the room' We had you think 'from which direction reverberation sound came from'.



As a result of imaging brain activity with neuroimaging, the brain activity when a blind person who is an echo location expert hears a sound is comparable to the brain activity when a visible person sees an object. I found that my brain activity is completely different from that of a blind person who cannot use echolocation. The more skilled the echo location, the closer the brain activity was to the activity of looking at things.

The research group said, 'By comparing blind people who can use echolocation with blind people who can't use echolocation, it was shown that this change in the brain is not caused by' invisible '.' “It is extremely important in the interpretation of human brain function”.

in Science, Posted by darkhorse_log