PEOPLE BLINDED IN INFANCY HAVE SHARPER LISTENING SKILLS
A
very interesting research conducted at Pascal Belin’s laboratory in Montreal (pascal.belin@umontreal.ca), by Frederic Gougoux, Franco Lepore, Maryse Lassonde, Patrice Voss and
Robert Zatorre, answers the question: “Do blind people develop superior
abilities in auditory perception to compensate for their lack of vision?”. In
fact, they are known to be better than
sighted people at orientating themselves by sound, but it is not clear whether
this enhanced awareness extends to other auditory domains, such as listening to
music or to voices.
The
authors of the brief communication published in the 15th July issue
of Nature (Neuropsychology: Pitch discrimination in the early blind Nature
430, 309, 2004)
show that blind people are better than sighted controls at
judging the direction of pitch change between sounds, even when the speed of
change is ten times faster than that perceived by the controls — but only if
they became blind at an early age. The younger the onset of blindness, the
better is the performance, which is in line with cerebral plasticity being
optimal during the early years.
BM&L-July 2004