据英国广播公司报道,日前,加拿大科学家最新研究显示,人类基于大脑特殊区域可像蝙蝠一样观看外界环境。一些盲人通过敲打噪音和倾听回声,像蝙蝠一样凭回声测定方向和位置。
加拿大科学家最新研究显示,人类基于大脑特殊区域可像蝙蝠一样观看外界环境。
这项最新实验是对两位盲人进行分析研究,研究结果发表在《公共科学图书馆——综合》期刊上。显示当盲人倾听回声时,与视觉相关的大脑区域将被激活。
蝙蝠和海豚通过周围环境的反弹声波及倾听回声,能够“看清”周围环境。一些盲人也学会了该方法,使他们的生活得到了很大的改善,能够分辨城市道路并进行一些体育活动。目前,加拿大研究人员对两位盲人进行了每天回声定位能力测试,测试者EB今年43岁,自出生后13个月便失明;测试者LB今年27岁,自14岁便失明。
在实验中,研究人员记录了他们的回声测定方向能力,同时,麦克风连接至测试者的耳朵上。功能性磁振造影数据记录了大脑的活动性,结果他们发现大脑距状皮层具有增强活动性。
加拿大西安大略大学洛雷-泰勒(Lore Thaler)博士称,这项研究表明视觉大脑区域对于盲人回声定位系统具有重要作用。虽然这项研究仅对两位盲人进行了测试,尚不能断定所有人群都懂得使用回声定位感知周围环境,但该研究表明,EB和LB测试者使用回声定位的方法与视觉系统有着惊人相似之处。
“失明者行动”组织康复官员苏西-罗伯茨(Susie Roberts)说:“这项针对大脑活动性和回声定位的研究令人感到非常有趣,有助于提高我们理解盲人如何处理视觉信息及实现安全导航。进一步的深入研究将有助于提高失明群体的可移动性和独立生活能力。”(生物谷Bioon.com)
生物谷推荐原文出处:
PLoS ONE DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0020162
Neural Correlates of Natural Human Echolocation in Early and Late Blind Echolocation Experts
Lore Thaler, Stephen R. Arnott, Melvyn A. Goodale
Background
A small number of blind people are adept at echolocating silent objects simply by producing mouth clicks and listening to the returning echoes. Yet the neural architecture underlying this type of aid-free human echolocation has not been investigated. To tackle this question, we recruited echolocation experts, one early- and one late-blind, and measured functional brain activity in each of them while they listened to their own echolocation sounds.
Results
When we compared brain activity for sounds that contained both clicks and the returning echoes with brain activity for control sounds that did not contain the echoes, but were otherwise acoustically matched, we found activity in calcarine cortex in both individuals. Importantly, for the same comparison, we did not observe a difference in activity in auditory cortex. In the early-blind, but not the late-blind participant, we also found that the calcarine activity was greater for echoes reflected from surfaces located in contralateral space. Finally, in both individuals, we found activation in middle temporal and nearby cortical regions when they listened to echoes reflected from moving targets.
Conclusions
These findings suggest that processing of click-echoes recruits brain regions typically devoted to vision rather than audition in both early and late blind echolocation experts.