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Early Blindness Sharpens Sense of Sound
squidfrog writes "Canadian researchers (articles here, here, and here) have released findings that 'compare the hearing perception of people who lost their sight by age 2, individuals who went blind between the ages 5 and 45, and people with normal vision. The test involved listening to a series of two tones. For each set of tones, subjects had to determine whether the pitch was rising or falling.' 'It has long been known that blind people are far better than their sighted counterparts at orientating themselves by sound... this latest research has found that blind people are also up to 10 times better at discerning pitch changes than the sighted, but only when they went blind before the age of two.'"
I'll also bet that people who are blind aren't likely to attempt to light firecrackers at an early age (12) and have one go off near their left ear, causing tinnitus at that early of an age. They may also not be so inclined to attempt to play live music at such volumes to destroy their ears.
Of course, my right ear still has no ringing in it (age 29 now), but if I concentrate, I can tell my left ear still rings. There are days I wish I hadn't lit that firecracker... but you only live once!
Karnal
Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder, because someone has to.
Really, it's great to have a study that confirms the mechanism, but given the number of brilliant blind musicians, it's no surprise.
I was born premature and have impaired hearing.
My body compensated and now I have an elevated sense of self importance.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I once saw a show on Discovery channel (I think it was National Geographic) where experiments were done of braille reading skills. A blind-folded person would asked to read some braille characters using their fingers while measuring activity in different parts of their brain. The part related to visual processing was "quiet" since they were blind-folded.
Then after many days remaining blindfolded, they were asked again to do some braille reading. The accuracy would improve and amazingly enough the part of the brain related to visual processing would show activity showing it was taking on some new tasks. After this the blindfolds were taken off and after a few hours of rest, the braille reading accuracy dropped and brain activity went back to normal.
...the man without fear.
That basic idea is the premise of what happened to him. He lost his sight, and it extremely improved his other senses. To put a little comic book spin on it, though, they incorporated the angle that it was some kind of radioactive waste that splashed in his face so that it caused a more extreme heightening of his senses than a normal person.
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
If you never use your eyes, your occipital lobe ("visual cortex") is never dedicated to processing vision, and is instead used for other tasks.
Otherwise, your occipital lobe is almost exclusively used for processing visual information. Losing your eyesight later in life won't change that. Music practice certainly won't change that.
Some congenitally blind subjects can develop a "face sense" that allows them to hear and process the sound of their own movements echoing off nearby objects, and thus detect their presence and general location. Music practice certainly won't change that either.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
I am a hearing-impared individual who is funcional with hearing aids but basically deaf without. As my hearing has gotten worse, I have found myself making adaptations without realizing it. About a year ago, I realized I was able to identify the people I work with via the vibrations through the floor when they approach. I am not sure how long I have been doing this. I have long been aware of increasing sensitivity in my vision, but my sense of touch??? Freaky.
Crushing my karma one post at a time.
People who lose their legs early in life have stronger and have more dexterity in their arms than people who don't.
However, have you ever tried white-noise therapy? It does give some sense of 'relief' to the constant ringing sound.
I'm 37, and just found out this past year (at my grandmother's funeral) why I've always had a clear, pure tone in both ears. When I was 5 months old, a small-town fireworks display went bad, resulting in a huge blast that shook the whole area. I don't ever remember *not* hearing the tone -- I can hear it right now if I focus on it.
I don't think I'd want the sound to go away. It's my sound, by golly, and I'm keeping it!
I can also hear the high-pitched sound of a CRT tube that's on but not displaying anything. It's less noticable on newer TVs -- either that, or I've lost that high-high end of my hearing with age. I wonder if that's a side effect of losing those cilia when I was a baby, or would I have had this Amazing Super Power anyway?
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Wow, not only did you not RTFA, you didn't RTFBlurb. They said that going blind helps your hearing ONLY if you go blind before the age of 2.
"Only the blind subjects who had become blind before the age of two had a clearly superior performance. Late blind subjects, people who became blind after the age of five, were no different from the control subjects."
They attribute it to brain plasticity in infants. Yes, late blind people and musicians do have better hearing, but that is more from learning than anything else (Practice, like you said). This story is talking about actual physiological differences.
IANAL, but I play one on
Ulysses Everett McGill: I don't know Delmar. The blind are reputed to possess sensitivities compensating for their lack of sight, even to the point of developing paranormal psychic powers. Now, clearly seeing into the future would fall into neatly into that category; its not so surprising then that an organism deprived of its earthly vision...
(O Brother, Where Art Thou?)
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
What about blindness which occurs later in life, but is a result of radioactive chemicals?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
These are the moments when I wish it were legal and ethical to experiment on humans. I want to know what happens if you temporarily induce blindness (like a permanent blindfold)in an infant so that it develops this ultra-hearing, then afterwards take off the blindfold. Would its hearing still be exceptional? Would its vision be highly impaired from being undeveloped? Since the eyes still technically work, would it develop super night vision?
Yes, the logistics of this is mind-boggling, as is the thought of seriously mucking around with some poor infant. But I want to know!
IANAL, but I play one on
(Capt'n Crunch)
"They attribute it to brain plasticity in infants. Yes, late blind people and musicians do have better hearing, but that is more from learning than anything else (Practice, like you said). This story is talking about actual physiological differences."
Infants and young children have more brain plasticity, but everybody has it to some degree. I've seen an 8 year old have a left hemispherectomy after a Wada test showed he language centers were on the left side, and she learned to speak with only a right hemisphere. I've seen a 30-some year old man who'd had his lower arm amputated, and the sensations of his hand mapped to an area on his face AND an area on his upper chest (for no apparent reason) with an accuracy that let his doctor map what positions on his face and chest caused sensations in a particular (missing) finger. In both cases the changes occured in less than 2 weeks, and occured in the absence of any training to make it happen. This is not practice effect.
Younger chaildren have more brain plasticity because they have far more synapses than they need, and undergo the process of "pruning" (weeding out the extras) mostly early on, but somewhat until age 5. Everyone has some plasticity because they have the ability to grown and ungrow synapses and complex connectivity with association areas (the cortex areas between major perceptual or cognitive processing centers) throughout life. And we now know we can also regrow neurons.
Showing no statistical difference from controls is not the same as showing a significant statistical similarity with controls. It doesn't mean they were the same, and it doesn't even mean they weren't different. It only means with the few they studied they couldn't say with an arbitrary level of reliability (probably 95%) that the late-blind and controls definitely represented two different groups.
Those who fail to learn statistics are doomed to repeat them poorly.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Some congenitally blind subjects can develop a "face sense" that allows them to hear and process the sound of their own movements echoing off nearby objects, and thus detect their presence and general location. Music practice certainly won't change that either.
^_^ And as I understand it, seeing people can also manage this mystic "face sense" if they put a little time into it. Try it some time. Stand in a relatively quiet room and clap your hands. Take a step forward and clap again. Notice the difference? After that, it's practice. Yes, it's probably easier if learned from an early age where the brain is more plastic, but basically anyone with decent hearing can learn it.
As for your comment about music practice, that's one of those things I find interesting. I'm missing a cite here, but I remember reading a study that experimented with teaching children in their first few years, everything from flashcards to music. They found that the knowledge did not seem to stick enough to influence future learning except for music. Supposedly, children who started music at an early age consistently tested higher in that area later in life. Also missing a cite for the one study I read talking about how raising a child around music at a very early age tends to lead to a child with extremely good to perfect pitch, with a corollary that cultures with a pitch-sensitive language such as Vietnamese tended to produce children with perfect pitch, even if the child was originally of another nationality.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
I hear the same tone, i think its genetic, we all hear in our own way at are own levels
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
(which are mammals btw)
They're some of our closest non-primate relatives, also having descended from tree shrews.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.