Many people who are blind have learned how to "see" and navigate the world using echolocation like bats, shrews, and whales. The skill involves making loud clicking noises with the tongue and then listening for the echo to judge not only distance but sometimes even determine the material of an object. Several years ago, Durham University neuroscientsts showed that people who are sighted can also learn click-based echolocation, often in just ten weeks. This is surprising, researcher Lore Thaler explains, because "there's been this strong tradition to think of the blind brain as different, that it's necessary to have gone through that sensory loss to have this neuroplasticity."
Now though, the researchers have determined that echolocation training remodels the brain in sighted participants just as it does in people who are blind—by rewiring the visual cortex so it responds to sound.
From Scientific American:
After training, both blind and sighted people displayed responses to echoes in their visual cortex, a finding that challenges the belief that primary sensory regions are wholly sense-specific….
…After training, both blind and sighted participants also showed visual cortex activation in response to audible echoes. "We weren't sure if we would get this result in sighted people, so it was really rewarding to see it," Thaler says. She suspects that rather than just processing visual data, this brain area takes in information from varied senses that aid spatial understanding.
(via Daily Grail)
Previously:
• People can learn to echolocate like bats in just ten weeks
• Echolocation to 'see' with sound
