6 ms·

Echolocation in blind people reveals the brain’s adaptive powers

DubiousPusher 7y ago
Legally blind person here. I've followed these claims for a while and am very interested in them. I was very excited when I first heard about this phenomena but quickly became skeptical when I couldn't find any serious research of it. Other than some case reports and a few people on the internet claiming they could do this. Also the near constant resurgence of Daniel Kish every time someone writes about this gives it kind of cult like vibe. Honestly, the reporting has been of a somewhat offensive variety. Particularly an NPR article and podcast a few years back. The reporting was like, "you'll never believe what this blind person can do! They ride a bike!" Which of course we can. A completely blind person could absolutely learn to ride a bike, especially in a place they knew was safe and had repeat access to. The article failed utterly to gauge the actual day to day impact this supposed echolocation had. That's the true way to judge if a piece of equipment or technique is helpful to a disabled person. What does it do for them at their worst not in their most well known and optimal setting. I don't need my monocular at any of the street crossings near my home. I know their timings and patterns like my morning routine. Even worse the article blaimed the failure of this technique to catch on upon orientation and mobility experts who assist blind people in learning to navigate the world. I've worked with quite a few of these folks and the idea of suppressing effective behavior to better fit in is super outmoded. Even in the 90s in the rural state I grew up in that would not have been tolerated. If anything the low blind and low vision folks themselves cares far more about whether they stood out than the mobility experts did. Anyway, the dearth of significant research, the seeming inability to spread it widely through the mobility and orientation community and its near total revolution around the claims of Kish leave it feeling a bit suspicious. I hope it's real and can help a lot of people by becoming standard education for blind and low vision but I'm not holding my breath.
- kiba 7y ago
  Interesting. Did you try learning it? Also, effective techniques might not be taught for various reasons other than effectiveness, like foreign language classes' seemly inability to teach students how to speak foreign languages well.
- colshrapnel 7y ago
  I remember reading an article about Ben Underwood[1]. It was headlined with something like a blind boy can play video games using an echolocation. It turned out he just remembers the right succession of moves after a lot of try and fails. On the one hand, I should blame the author, not the boy for the title. But when I tried to research the topic, all I was able to find is only a couple articles using similar gimmicks, so I became quite skeptical. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation#Ben_Underwood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation#Ben_Underwo...
  - DubiousPusher 7y ago
    Exactly. I'm wary because it would be very easy for this to be a clever Hans situation. There are many signals blind and low vision people use to help themselves that it's very hard not to conflate them.
- exDM69 7y ago
  I have normal eyesight but I have practiced echolocation for fun. I can gain some situational awareness and navigate familiar spaces with eyes closed. What you should hear is similar to tweaking a reverb effect in an audio software. With repeated practice you will learn the difference in the tone of a hard object and a soft object or an object near or far. In audio engineering terms, you're trying to measure the impulse response of the room around you. The important bit is generating sharp impulse clicks to listen to. You can make clicks with your mouth but your tongue will get tired soon. You can also try a handheld clicker like used in behavioral conditioning for dogs. I try to make a directional sound pointed left or right. I saw a documentary about echolocation training, and they started with an assistant holding a glass piece around the student and the student trying to guess where it is. Other things you could try is navigating a familiar space with white noise from a sound system to understand how you subconsciously listen to echoes of your feet, etc. This is absolutely something you can learn by simple practice, there is no magic to it.
  - DubiousPusher 7y ago
    The question is not whether people can infer some information from their environment using sound. That is very clearly the case. As most people will know from personal experience by detecting the presence or absence of nearby walls due to the presence or absence of ambient echo. The question is whether the claims of "expert" echo locators can be verified and whether it would be a worthwhile pursuit to standardize and teach this technique to blind and low vision persons. I could attempt to learn this technique but I have enough vision that I'm generally not in need of it especially with the application of current compensations. I could attempt to learn it for personal verification reasons but I would then be just another anecdote and that's not really what I consider suitable evidence for validation.
    - exDM69 7y ago
      It might be that reaching expert level in human echolocation requires some "musical talent" to hear the differences. The Wikipedia article on human echolocation has some links to research groups and programs, maybe their publications have some of the information you are looking for.
- eth0up 7y ago
  My perspective as someone with normal vision may be naive, so please pardon any disappointment with the following account or recommendation. After reading James Nestor's Deep[1], it has after one year, remained my favorite book in memory - a kind of panacea for much that ailed me and just plain fascinating. If I remember correctly, Brian Bushway[2] is featured in parts of the book. Having minimal experience and admittedly much ignorance on matters of blindness, my perspective may be presumptuous and dumb, but I found the story extremely significant. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Nestor_(writer) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Nestor_(writer) 2. An article by Nestor mentioning who I suspect is the fellow from the book: https://emergencemagazine.org/story/the-sight-of-sound/ https://emergencemagazine.org/story/the-sight-of-sound/
- tokai 7y ago
  >I couldn't find any serious research of it Where did you look? The keywords echolocation and blind returns hundreds of relevant articles in google scholar. Many of them from serious journals.
  - DubiousPusher 7y ago
    I've found a lot of those articles to be a bit like the psi experiments of the 1970s and 1980s. They generally begin from a place of treating the echolocator's claims as credulous or they seriously underestimate the ability of blind people to derive signals from many different cues. I'd really like to see some double blinded studies comparing the success of echolocators in every day tasks against non-echolocators.
    - grawprog 7y ago
      >I'd really like to see some double blinded studies comparing the success of echolocators in every day tasks against non-echolocators. I'm trying to think of how you could set up that study. There's a lot of factors you'd have to control for. You'd need to set up some kind of baseline to work off of. Which I feel like could be difficult with something like compensating for a disability. There's the length of time being blind to consider. Someone who's been blind longer likely has better abilities at finding their way around and finding things whatever methods they use. Then as another poster mentioned, there's controlling for echolators using different methods along with echolocation. Then there's sample size. To get an actual unbiased set of data work with you would need more than a handful of people. You'd need a fairly large group of disparate people in each category you're testing for to get any kind of statistically significant result. There's lots more to consider, these are just a few that came to mind off the to of my head. It would be a cool study to see done though.
    - tokai 7y ago
      What about this review?[0] The list of articles citing the review should also be a good place to look. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378595514000185 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037859551...
    - 7y ago
dwoozle 7y ago
It’s amazing how much information we ignore. I used to volunteer at a nursing home and I was pushing a blind lady down the hall and she said “this room is mine.” I asked her “how did you know?” And she explained that she could hear the recessed doorways (and the difference between open doors and closed ones) as we passed them, and knew that hers was the 11th door. She told me I could do it myself. I thought “bullshit, this is some magic power for blind people” but when I just closed my eyes and focused on it, it’s completely easy. Your footstep’s echo off a closed door is completely different than hallway. It took me literally no practice, I could do it on the first try.
flimflamm 7y ago
As a kid when playing blindfolded trying to catch others I used this (echo location) all the time to avoid bumping to walls. Nothing in it is something which would be unique for blind people.
JoeAltmaier 7y ago
Strange idea, that blind people have some special power here. Any human brain has sophisticated techniques for locating the sources and nature of environmental sounds. Just close your eyes, have somebody stand behind you and put a hand up to your right or left ear, 8 inches away. You can instantly tell where their hand is. Just from the change in the way environmental sounds reach your head. Did you try it?
- eth0up 7y ago
  Not strange so much as a matter of contrast in circumstantial demand and acclimation, which must be measurably different for the blind vs hobbyist. James Nestor, in his time with Bushway, was able to accomplish echolocation feats that astonished him. Though I don't think he ever argued that the ability is equal for the blind and seeing, he did seem to conclude that the ability isn't restricted to the blind. I expect it would require a rare and great dedication for the dilettante to compete with a serious full-timer, in any skill. Functional blindness is a very formidable skill, one that very few would (could?) optionally practice full time.
syllable_studio 7y ago
A few years ago, I was very inspired by Daniel Kish and others who use echolocation. So I started a side project called Project Sonorous. Sonorous was a prototype to explore combining AR with echolocation and 3D audio. This allows you to translate visual spatial information into echolocation-like audio cues through headphones. I would still love to work on this idea in the future. But it would require a lot of funding and advanced technology (similar to that used by self-driving cars.) https://blog.syllablehq.com/project-sonorous-a-proposed-navigation-tool-for-the-visually-impaired/ https://blog.syllablehq.com/project-sonorous-a-proposed-navi...
miki123211 7y ago
Totally blind person here. I haven't used echolocation much in my life, except for the standard wall/door detection tricks, of course. I've met a very small number of people who do it successfully, though. One guy I know is a near expert. He lost his sight like 4 years ago and he alrady learned it on a pretty advanced level. He taught us to detect things like glasses on a table and tell where they are. The class was only like 3, 4 hours though, so I guess it's just the tip of an iceberg.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- elliekelly 7y ago
  The article mentions that echolocation is a way the brain adapts in some blind people but your comment seems like echolocation is at least partially learned skill. Since you’ve taken a class on it I’d be curious to know whether you got the sense it’s something most people could learn if they wanted to spend the time/effort? Or does it seem like the sort of thing that some people just seem to pick up “naturally”?
  - miki123211 7y ago
    The things he tried to teach us could be done by most students at least semi-reliably. I think practice helps here, but talent helps too, just like with learning to play a musical instrument. There are people for whom it comes easily, but it seems other people can be taught too. This is all anecdotal evidence, though.
- AllanHoustonSt 7y ago
  Does training for something like this lean more towards perfecting technique or forcing adaptation through repetition like training a muscle?
  - miki123211 7y ago
    We had just one class, so I can't really tell for certain. The advice the guy gave us was to try this at home, in various situations and see what we can do.

Legally blind person here. I've followed these claims for a while and am very interested in them. I was very excited when I first heard about this phenomena but quickly became skeptical when I couldn't find any serious research of it. Other than some case reports and a few people on the internet claiming they could do this. Also the near constant resurgence of Daniel Kish every time someone writes about this gives it kind of cult like vibe. Honestly, the reporting has been of a somewhat offensive variety. Particularly an NPR article and podcast a few years back. The reporting was like, "you'll never believe what this blind person can do! They ride a bike!" Which of course we can. A completely blind person could absolutely learn to ride a bike, especially in a place they knew was safe and had repeat access to. The article failed utterly to gauge the actual day to day impact this supposed echolocation had. That's the true way to judge if a piece of equipment or technique is helpful to a disabled person. What does it do for them at their worst not in their most well known and optimal setting. I don't need my monocular at any of the street crossings near my home. I know their timings and patterns like my morning routine. Even worse the article blaimed the failure of this technique to catch on upon orientation and mobility experts who assist blind people in learning to navigate the world. I've worked with quite a few of these folks and the idea of suppressing effective behavior to better fit in is super outmoded. Even in the 90s in the rural state I grew up in that would not have been tolerated. If anything the low blind and low vision folks themselves cares far more about whether they stood out than the mobility experts did. Anyway, the dearth of significant research, the seeming inability to spread it widely through the mobility and orientation community and its near total revolution around the claims of Kish leave it feeling a bit suspicious. I hope it's real and can help a lot of people by becoming standard education for blind and low vision but I'm not holding my breath.

kiba 7y ago
Interesting. Did you try learning it? Also, effective techniques might not be taught for various reasons other than effectiveness, like foreign language classes' seemly inability to teach students how to speak foreign languages well.
colshrapnel 7y ago
I remember reading an article about Ben Underwood[1]. It was headlined with something like a blind boy can play video games using an echolocation. It turned out he just remembers the right succession of moves after a lot of try and fails. On the one hand, I should blame the author, not the boy for the title. But when I tried to research the topic, all I was able to find is only a couple articles using similar gimmicks, so I became quite skeptical. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation#Ben_Underwood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation#Ben_Underwo...
- DubiousPusher 7y ago
  Exactly. I'm wary because it would be very easy for this to be a clever Hans situation. There are many signals blind and low vision people use to help themselves that it's very hard not to conflate them.
exDM69 7y ago
I have normal eyesight but I have practiced echolocation for fun. I can gain some situational awareness and navigate familiar spaces with eyes closed. What you should hear is similar to tweaking a reverb effect in an audio software. With repeated practice you will learn the difference in the tone of a hard object and a soft object or an object near or far. In audio engineering terms, you're trying to measure the impulse response of the room around you. The important bit is generating sharp impulse clicks to listen to. You can make clicks with your mouth but your tongue will get tired soon. You can also try a handheld clicker like used in behavioral conditioning for dogs. I try to make a directional sound pointed left or right. I saw a documentary about echolocation training, and they started with an assistant holding a glass piece around the student and the student trying to guess where it is. Other things you could try is navigating a familiar space with white noise from a sound system to understand how you subconsciously listen to echoes of your feet, etc. This is absolutely something you can learn by simple practice, there is no magic to it.
- DubiousPusher 7y ago
  The question is not whether people can infer some information from their environment using sound. That is very clearly the case. As most people will know from personal experience by detecting the presence or absence of nearby walls due to the presence or absence of ambient echo. The question is whether the claims of "expert" echo locators can be verified and whether it would be a worthwhile pursuit to standardize and teach this technique to blind and low vision persons. I could attempt to learn this technique but I have enough vision that I'm generally not in need of it especially with the application of current compensations. I could attempt to learn it for personal verification reasons but I would then be just another anecdote and that's not really what I consider suitable evidence for validation.
  - exDM69 7y ago
    It might be that reaching expert level in human echolocation requires some "musical talent" to hear the differences. The Wikipedia article on human echolocation has some links to research groups and programs, maybe their publications have some of the information you are looking for.
eth0up 7y ago
My perspective as someone with normal vision may be naive, so please pardon any disappointment with the following account or recommendation. After reading James Nestor's Deep[1], it has after one year, remained my favorite book in memory - a kind of panacea for much that ailed me and just plain fascinating. If I remember correctly, Brian Bushway[2] is featured in parts of the book. Having minimal experience and admittedly much ignorance on matters of blindness, my perspective may be presumptuous and dumb, but I found the story extremely significant. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Nestor_(writer) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Nestor_(writer) 2. An article by Nestor mentioning who I suspect is the fellow from the book: https://emergencemagazine.org/story/the-sight-of-sound/ https://emergencemagazine.org/story/the-sight-of-sound/
tokai 7y ago
>I couldn't find any serious research of it Where did you look? The keywords echolocation and blind returns hundreds of relevant articles in google scholar. Many of them from serious journals.
- DubiousPusher 7y ago
  I've found a lot of those articles to be a bit like the psi experiments of the 1970s and 1980s. They generally begin from a place of treating the echolocator's claims as credulous or they seriously underestimate the ability of blind people to derive signals from many different cues. I'd really like to see some double blinded studies comparing the success of echolocators in every day tasks against non-echolocators.
  - grawprog 7y ago
    >I'd really like to see some double blinded studies comparing the success of echolocators in every day tasks against non-echolocators. I'm trying to think of how you could set up that study. There's a lot of factors you'd have to control for. You'd need to set up some kind of baseline to work off of. Which I feel like could be difficult with something like compensating for a disability. There's the length of time being blind to consider. Someone who's been blind longer likely has better abilities at finding their way around and finding things whatever methods they use. Then as another poster mentioned, there's controlling for echolators using different methods along with echolocation. Then there's sample size. To get an actual unbiased set of data work with you would need more than a handful of people. You'd need a fairly large group of disparate people in each category you're testing for to get any kind of statistically significant result. There's lots more to consider, these are just a few that came to mind off the to of my head. It would be a cool study to see done though.
  - tokai 7y ago
    What about this review?[0] The list of articles citing the review should also be a good place to look. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378595514000185 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037859551...
  - 7y ago

dwoozle 7y ago

It’s amazing how much information we ignore. I used to volunteer at a nursing home and I was pushing a blind lady down the hall and she said “this room is mine.” I asked her “how did you know?” And she explained that she could hear the recessed doorways (and the difference between open doors and closed ones) as we passed them, and knew that hers was the 11th door. She told me I could do it myself. I thought “bullshit, this is some magic power for blind people” but when I just closed my eyes and focused on it, it’s completely easy. Your footstep’s echo off a closed door is completely different than hallway. It took me literally no practice, I could do it on the first try.

flimflamm 7y ago

As a kid when playing blindfolded trying to catch others I used this (echo location) all the time to avoid bumping to walls. Nothing in it is something which would be unique for blind people.

JoeAltmaier 7y ago

Strange idea, that blind people have some special power here. Any human brain has sophisticated techniques for locating the sources and nature of environmental sounds. Just close your eyes, have somebody stand behind you and put a hand up to your right or left ear, 8 inches away. You can instantly tell where their hand is. Just from the change in the way environmental sounds reach your head. Did you try it?

eth0up 7y ago
Not strange so much as a matter of contrast in circumstantial demand and acclimation, which must be measurably different for the blind vs hobbyist. James Nestor, in his time with Bushway, was able to accomplish echolocation feats that astonished him. Though I don't think he ever argued that the ability is equal for the blind and seeing, he did seem to conclude that the ability isn't restricted to the blind. I expect it would require a rare and great dedication for the dilettante to compete with a serious full-timer, in any skill. Functional blindness is a very formidable skill, one that very few would (could?) optionally practice full time.

syllable_studio 7y ago

A few years ago, I was very inspired by Daniel Kish and others who use echolocation. So I started a side project called Project Sonorous. Sonorous was a prototype to explore combining AR with echolocation and 3D audio. This allows you to translate visual spatial information into echolocation-like audio cues through headphones. I would still love to work on this idea in the future. But it would require a lot of funding and advanced technology (similar to that used by self-driving cars.) https://blog.syllablehq.com/project-sonorous-a-proposed-navigation-tool-for-the-visually-impaired/ https://blog.syllablehq.com/project-sonorous-a-proposed-navi...

miki123211 7y ago

Totally blind person here. I haven't used echolocation much in my life, except for the standard wall/door detection tricks, of course. I've met a very small number of people who do it successfully, though. One guy I know is a near expert. He lost his sight like 4 years ago and he alrady learned it on a pretty advanced level. He taught us to detect things like glasses on a table and tell where they are. The class was only like 3, 4 hours though, so I guess it's just the tip of an iceberg.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
elliekelly 7y ago
The article mentions that echolocation is a way the brain adapts in some blind people but your comment seems like echolocation is at least partially learned skill. Since you’ve taken a class on it I’d be curious to know whether you got the sense it’s something most people could learn if they wanted to spend the time/effort? Or does it seem like the sort of thing that some people just seem to pick up “naturally”?
- miki123211 7y ago
  The things he tried to teach us could be done by most students at least semi-reliably. I think practice helps here, but talent helps too, just like with learning to play a musical instrument. There are people for whom it comes easily, but it seems other people can be taught too. This is all anecdotal evidence, though.
AllanHoustonSt 7y ago
Does training for something like this lean more towards perfecting technique or forcing adaptation through repetition like training a muscle?
- miki123211 7y ago
  We had just one class, so I can't really tell for certain. The advice the guy gave us was to try this at home, in various situations and see what we can do.