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.'"

Comments

Let's mention

[crmartin]

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.

Re:Let's mention

[bcattwoo]

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 think that there would be some question as to whether it was an increased sense of hearing that made them great musicians or did their lack of sight motivate them to excel in the art of one of their remaining senses?

Re:Let's mention

[robochan]

Also, I wonder if this has anything to do with the human ability for learning language. Music is considered a language by many people, and a lot of studies show that languages are best learned when the subject is as young as possible. The (supposed?) increase in other senses' abilities when one is lost might also be a factor. By no means do I have scientiffic correlation for this, of course, but there might be something to it.

Re:the blind....

[robochan]

How the post got marked redudnant is a mystery ;)
However, have you ever tried white-noise therapy? It does give some sense of 'relief' to the constant ringing sound. Whenever I go to a live show that's especially loud, on the way back, I set the car radio between stations (the static is pretty close to white noise) and it 'counter-acts' the ringing a bit - so much so that it allows those in the car to have a conversation without having to yell. Ocean wave sounds have a simliar effect.

I have a similar story

[DrSkwid]

I was born premature and have impaired hearing.

My body compensated and now I have an elevated sense of self importance.

Not just early blindness

[baywulf]

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.

Re:They are wrong!

[Elwood P Dowd]

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.

adaptations

[EaterOfDog]

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.

Re:adaptations

[mooncaine]

I grew up with a grandmother who was totally deaf since some time in her adolescence. She lived most of her adult life in a foreign country, raised 4 children and 2 grandchildren.

To me, the main disadvantage I could say her deafness brought her was that she never learned to speak English. She could speak Greek so well, and lip-read Greek so well, that people very often refused to believe she was deaf. [I tested whether she could hear an electric guitar amplified beyond my pain threshold -- no dice]. We'd have to remind some folks not to yell at her, not to raise their voices -- it was pointless and only annoyed those around her who could hear the yelling.

She knew us all by our "sounds", felt through the floor. She could "hear" her daugther's car in the driveway, through the ground, so to speak. When we needed to catch her attention, one or two stomps on the floor would do, and as long as we spoke Greek, all we needed to do was face her when we spoke. The floor-stomp got to be a sort of family vocabulary; you could stomp differently if it was urgent, or if you just wanted to catch her attention for something trivial, etc.

If I had to choose between losing my sight or hearing, I'd rather lose my hearing, because I learned from my grandmother's example how to adapt. I wonder if I'd feel differently if she'd been blind, instead. Probably so.

Ringing In Ears

[RobertB-DC]

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?

Re:Ringing In Ears

[Deflagro]

That CRT thing is more of a feeling than a hearing tho, I have the same problem. I can hear that noise before the actualy sound on a TV, through walls and all. It's very distinctive. I thought i was the only one that could do that :)

Re:Daredevil!

[AuMatar]

Also th emost useless superhero of all. His special power is that he's a blind man who can see. The two cancel each other out! Its like he's a normal man.

"Face Sense"

[SeanDuggan]

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.