In just 10 weeks, you can learn to “see” with your ears!

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It's an amazing ability that some wild animals have. Echolocation, or echolocation consists of putting in sounds (often ultrasounds, i.e. sounds inaudible to the human ear) and listening to the echo that comes back when they encounter an obstacle. Bats, for example, use it to navigate in total darkness, hunt, or locate obstacles while flying. Dolphins and whales emit clicks that allow them to detect fish and other marine animals, even in murky waters.

Some humans, including blind or visually impaired people, have developed a form of echolocation naturally that allows them to move around using the sounds of their footsteps or objects they encounter. A form of superpower? Not so much, if we are to believe this study conducted by the University of Durham, which demonstrated that in ten weeks of training, the human brain can develop this ability to ” see with its ears “.

A structured and accessible learning protocol

Neuroscientist Lore Thaler and her team conducted the research in collaboration with 26 participants, including 12 blind people and 14 sighted people. The participants underwent a two- to three-hour biweekly training program. The researchers first taught the participants to produce tongue clicks, before giving them three types of exercises.

The first two focused on identifying the size and orientation of objects, while the third involved them navigating virtual mazes using simulated echo sounds that matched their positions. Thaler said the experiment was meant to prove that the scientific community may have been wrong about this echolocation ability. It was long thought that the brains of blind people worked differently, that they had to lose their sight for this neuroplasticity to develop ,” she explains.

When the brain disrupts sensory boundaries

The results of brain scans carried out before and after the training protocol revealed unexpected transformations. Both groups showed increased activation in the auditory cortex and increased gray matter density in the auditory areas after 10 weeks.

Another surprising finding was that the visual cortex of both sighted and blind participants began to respond to sound echoes. Evidence that the participants' brains had developed a new way of interpreting soundsby mobilizing regions normally dedicated to sight.

This discovery challenges the idea that primary sensory regions are exclusively dedicated to a specific sense, as Thaler explains. According to the scientist, this brain area, the visual cortex, does not simply process visual data. It could also integrate information from different senses to improve our proprioception. That is, our ability to locate ourselves in space and be aware of our body; a form of internal GPS in a way.

Concrete benefits for autonomy

The team also conducted a post-training follow-up survey. Three months after the training, 83% of blind participants reported a significant improvement in their independence and well-being. Santani Teng, a psychologist at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute in San Francisco, said the feedback is encouraging. ” This study confirms that this ability, often considered exceptional, is in fact accessible and can be developed through training, whether one is sighted or blind “.

Faced with these promising results, the research team is currently working to disseminate this training program more widely. For Thaler, echolocation is a ” powerful sensory tool for visually impaired people ». This would therefore be accessible to everyone, thanks to appropriate training. It is possible to draw two other additional lessons from this research. The first is that our brain is much more malleable than we thought; it is capable of reorganizing itself and creating new neural connections throughout life, even in adulthood. The second, perhaps the most important, is that the different areas of our organ do not function in isolation, since they are apparently capable of communicating and collaborating to process sensory information more efficiently. From a neuroscience perspective, this is a real paradigm shift.

• A study has proven that echolocation can be learned in 10 weeks, by both sighted and blind people.
• The results show that the brain can mobilize the visual cortex to interpret sounds, thus breaking the idea of ​​brain regions strictly dedicated to certain senses.
• This ability ultimately improves the independence of blind people and also demonstrates the great flexibility of our brain organ.

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