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Research Shows How Deaf Cats' Brains Re-Purpose Auditory Centers
An anonymous reader writes "Deaf or blind people often report enhanced abilities in their remaining senses, but up until now, no one has explained how and why that could be. Researchers at the University of Western Ontario, led by Stephen Lomber of The Centre for Brain and Mind, have discovered there is a causal link between enhanced visual abilities and reorganization of the part of the brain that usually handles auditory input in congenitally deaf cats. The findings, published online in Nature Neuroscience, provide insight into the plasticity that may occur in the brains of deaf people."
Because getting a hearing aid to fit in a cat's ear would be rather difficult.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
The rare intersection of cats, disabilities, abilities, and jokes:
What has 9 arms, and ROCKS?
THL phish sticks
Everybody has very plastic brains. I know you meant it as a joke but brain damage usually gets routed around by the body even relocating whole centers to a different part of the brain. This research is just showing that just like brain damage, the body tries to route around the no-input problem from one organ and enhances others to compensate.
The brain is like a really small Internet. It routes around problems and has plenty of failover, fallbacks and backups for just about any 'site'.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
That experiment would be more valid if you had different items.
Use a can of food he wouldn't eat, or something that's not even food, and then the cat food in a different container, like a Ziplock bag. Seperate the stimuli artifically, such as wafting cat-food scents at him, or an audio recording of a can opening.
Try to figure out which stimuli he's reacting to.
I read the summary, it's kind of interesting. The graphs in the actual article look pretty definitive. But a sentence stood out to me:
Does anyone know what that is? I've never heard this before. My natural assumption would be that most animals could be born deaf, and that it's just selected out of the population by natural selection. But if that were the case, we'd expect other animals (especially those without natural selection pressures, such as domesticated Dogs) to be born deaf.
But just cats and humans? What about other primates?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Turn on a vacuum cleaner.
If you have to peel the cat out from underneath your bed ten seconds later, then it is not deaf.
HI, MY NAME IS ISAAC.
found this in two seconds
http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?c=2+1630&aid=857
I did this experiment a few years ago on our three (now two) cats. It's definitely the sound of the can opener, they associate it with tuna cans; but I can open any other can and they come running.
The interesting thing about it is that when my youngest cat was just a few months old, he did not associate the sound of the can with tuna treat - until he observed the other cats running for the kitchen, then he followed along and got a snack. It only took a couple of repetitions before he was responding the same way they did. So it's definitely a learned ability.
Cats hearing is incredible. I can go outside and down to the mailbox (about 100 ft), open a can, and they'll be waiting for me at the door when I return, even if the windows are closed.
Cats are extremely intelligent and besides making wonderful companions, are absolutely fascinating to observe. Our oldest, whom we lost about a year and a half ago, was a regular practical joker - he'd pull all sorts of funny stunts clearly designed just to get a laugh out of the humans - and if I pulled the camera out would go extremely photogenic - he clearly knew what it was for. He wasn't just begging for treats, either, we determined that early on - if we tried to give him a treat for his "trick" he'd sniff in a disdainful manner and walk away.
He was nearly twenty when we lost him and I had the opportunity to watch him refining his "acts" over a decade and a half. My youngest tomcat, mentioned above, is following right along in his path - it does seem that toms, and particularly mixed breed toms, have a considerable amount more awareness than female or purebred cats.
We miss that old tom a great deal. If one of us was depressed or tired he'd go to extremes to make us laugh, then come and look in our eyes for a while... he was unique in my experience of many cats.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
"Deaf or blind people often report enhanced abilities in their remaining senses, but up until now, no one has explained how and why that could be."
Up until now? Pfft.
There's been a lot of experiments done on the brain repurposing unused areas of the brain. For example, a school of the blind in France requires all of their teachers to spend some period of time living in perfect darkness inside a house so that they can better appreciate what their students are going through. Teachers that go through the program report being able to 'see sound', which is basically the result of their visual cortex being repurposed to process audio input, but which the brain is still taking as input into whatever it is that creates our visual senses in our sensorium.
Likewise, when they leave the darkness, they have a really hard time seeing for a few days, as the brain slowly adjusts back to using the visual cortex for what it was intended for.
I'd really recommend Dioge's book, The Brain that Changes Itself. It's a good summary of brain plasticity.
I for one welcome our deaf cat overlords.
I said "I welcome you"
I WELCOME YOU DEAF CATS!
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