Research Indicates Visual Cortex Develops New Skills After Training
Individuals who have been visually impaired from a young age are able to navigate traffic on bicycles and engage in certain sports, thanks to their echolocation skills. Typically, they produce loud clicking sounds and listen to how the sound echoes back after colliding with surrounding objects.
In-depth studies show that the brains of echolocation experts repurpose areas originally used for visual processing to analyze sound. According to research teams, the visual processing regions in the brains of visually impaired individuals can be reconfigured to perform new tasks.
Illustration of echolocation skills – (Photo: Thomas Fuchs).
“Previously, there was a belief that the brains of visually impaired people were different, requiring the loss of one sense for the brain to adapt so flexibly,” says Lore Thaler, a neuroscientist at Durham University and lead author of the new report.
In 2021, Thaler led a research team that reached an intriguing conclusion. Their scientific report indicated that both visually impaired individuals and those with normal sight could learn echolocation skills after 10 weeks of training.
In the recent study published in *Cerebral Cortex*, she and her colleagues examined brain changes after learning this fascinating skill. Once individuals learned to use echolocation, the brains of both visually impaired individuals and those with normal sight utilized the visual processing areas to analyze sound.
This finding contradicts the common belief that distinct brain regions are responsible for different functions; five brain areas correspond to the five senses.
Under imaging, different brain regions perform different tasks – (Illustration).
In the study, the team trained 14 individuals with normal vision and 12 visually impaired individuals, teaching them to use echolocation for 2-3 hours per week over 10 weeks. Initially, participants learned to produce sounds with their mouths, followed by three specialized exercises.
The first two exercises involved identifying the size or direction of objects in relation to the participant’s position. The third exercise required participants to navigate through a virtual maze with the assistance of a sound-emitting and echo-receiving device.
Over time, the echolocation skills of both groups improved significantly. Specifically, the auditory cortex was more active after subjects learned the new skill, and gray matter accumulated in that area.
Notably, the visual cortex of both groups lit up when using echolocation skills. Thaler posits that the visual cortex may not only process images but also gather information from other senses to enhance spatial awareness.
In the near future, the team plans to continue this experiment with a larger participant sample. “This is a powerful sensory tool for visually impaired individuals,” Thaler enthusiastically noted.
