Exceptional ability of blind humans to hear sound motion: Implications for the emergence of auditory space

• Published in: Neuropsychologia Vol. 51; no. 1; pp. 181 - 186
• Main Author: Lewald, Jörg
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kidlington Elsevier Ltd 01.01.2013; Elsevier
• Subjects: Acoustic Stimulation; Adult; Auditory Localization; Auditory motion; Auditory Perception; Biological and medical sciences; Blindness; Blindness - physiopathology; Brain; Cues/Cueing; Discrimination (Psychology); Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Handicap; Humans; Male; Medical sciences; Middle Aged; Motion; Motion Perception - physiology; Multisensory plasticity; Ophthalmology; Psychoacoustics; Psychology and medicine; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Sound localization; Sound Localization - physiology; Space; Space Perception - physiology; Spatial hearing; Vision Disorders; Young Adult; Sound localization; Auditory motion; Multisensory plasticity; Spatial hearing; Blindness; Ability; Human; Stimulus localization; Stimulus movement; Vision disorder; Cognition; Space perception; Experimental study; Eye disease; Hearing; Plasticity; Intermodal perception

Blind people may compensate for their visual loss by the increased use of auditory spatial information, thus showing normal or even supra-normal ability to localize sources of sound. However, the problem of how blind persons develop and maintain an internal concept of the topography of the auditory...