Experts in echolocation use multiple clicks and echoes to sense objects, offering insight into how the brain builds perception.
Navigating the world as a blind person sometimes involves using a cane, guide dog or wearable GPS system. For some, this toolkit includes echolocation. Producing tongue clicks and listening for echoes can be enough to gain information about nearby objects.
, especially for expert echolocators, researchers report April 6 in. The finding helps explain how the brain processes sound more generally.We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday. Many studies have shown that echolocation recruits visual areas of the brain and that performance improves significantly with practice. “What remained unexamined here was how this happens, how the information builds in real time, over individual echo signals,” says cognitive neuroscientist Santani Teng at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute in San Francisco. Teng and his team attached electrode caps to record brain activity in four blind expert echolocators and 21 sighted novices as they listened to prerecorded clicks and echoes. The sounds were played in sets of two, five, eight or 11. After each set of clicks and echoes, the participants decided whether the object was to their right or left. In line with previous research, expert echolocators were far better at determining the direction of an object than people who could see. One exceptional echolocator needed only to hear two sets of clicks and echoes to determine an object’s direction. Unlike in previous studies, the team used the brain wave data to show that each click-echo pair added to the evidence the brain was accumulating to make the perceptual decision. “The study suggests that in human echolocation, spatial representations are constructed by progressively accumulating acoustic evidence over time, rather than through a single ‘optimal snapshot,’ ” says neuroscientist Monica Gori at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa and the Institute for Human & Machine Cognition in Florida, who was not involved in the study. The team wants to continue to understand “what exactly makes better echolocators,” says cognitive neuroscientist Haydée García-Lázaro at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute. In addition to tracking the information echolocators gain from each click, she’s interested in how experts learn to ignore the click itself and attune only to the echo. “Echolocators have a truly remarkable skill, with real-life benefits, but it is not magic,” Teng says.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Artemis II Crew Shares Awe and Human Experiences of Lunar JourneyThe Artemis II crew, on a 10-day mission around the moon, shares their experiences, including awe-inspiring views, human concerns, and scientific observations, marking the first crewed lunar mission in over 50 years.
Read more »
‘Squad’ Member Ayanna Pressley: ‘Eviction Is an Act of Violence,’ ‘Housing Is a Human Right’Source of breaking news and analysis, insightful commentary and original reporting, curated and written specifically for the new generation of independent and conservative thinkers.
Read more »
Artemis II Crew Shares Awe and Human Concerns During Lunar JourneyThe Artemis II crew, on a 10-day lunar mission, shares their experiences from the Orion capsule, including awe-inspiring views of the Earth and moon, observations of the far side of the moon, and the challenges of everyday life in space. They are the first humans to embark on a lunar mission in over 50 years and will break records for distance traveled from Earth.
Read more »
Artemis astronauts catch first human glimpse of Moon’s 'Grand Canyon'Crew peers at the massive Orientale basin during historic lunar flyby, seeing regions of the Moon never viewed by human eyes.
Read more »
Artificial Intelligence in an Age of Human Idiocy and Stupid WarsJohn Feffer is the author of the dystopian novel 'Splinterlands' (2016) and the director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. His novel, 'Frostlands' (2018) is book two of his Splinterlands trilogy. Splinterlands book three 'Songlands' was published in 2021. His podcast is available here.
Read more »
Hawaii's most active volcano Kilauea brewing as experts forecast 44th eruption in coming daysToday's Video Headlines: 4/4/2026
Read more »