British scientists from the universities of Durham and York have proven that a person can relatively quickly learn echolocation – navigation in space using the reflection of sound. Bats, dolphins and other animals have this ability. The research was published in the scientific journal magazine Cerebral Cortex (CerCor).
“Echolocation is a fascinating skill to learn and allows us to understand the ability of the human brain to adapt to learning new skills. It also has real benefits for people with visual impairments,” said study author Dr. Lore Thaler.
The study involved 26 people, 12 of whom were blind and 14 who were sighted, with no previous experience using echolocation.
Volunteers completed a 10-week echolocation training program consisting of 20 sessions. Each session lasted 2–3 hours and included practice tasks such as size discrimination, orientation perception, and virtual maze navigation using echolocation.
Participants also practiced navigating real-world environments using echolocation under the guidance of scientists.
To measure brain activity and structure, group members underwent MRI scans before and after the training program. The scans focused on two main sensory areas: the visual cortex (V1) and the auditory cortex (A1).
The team found that both sighted and blind participants showed significant improvements in echolocation ability across all tasks.
For example, the average time required to navigate virtual mazes decreased from 104.1 seconds to 40.9 seconds for sighted participants and from 137.0 seconds to 57.23 seconds for blind participants, demonstrating the effectiveness of the training program.
MRI scans revealed significant changes in brain activity and structure after training. In the visual cortex (V1), both sighted and blind participants showed increased activity in response to echo sounds after training. This increase was significant in both left and right V1 for echo and anechoic contrasts.
Scientists were amazed at how quickly the brain’s primary visual cortex learned to respond to sound, both in people who were blind from birth and in those with perfect vision.
Whole-brain analysis also showed additional increases in activation in areas such as the superior parietal lobule, frontal cortex, and inferior parietal lobule. These regions are associated with increased attention and spatial processing abilities, suggesting that echolocation learning affects not only primary sensory areas but also higher-order cognitive processes associated with spatial navigation and attention.
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