Blind people tap unused brain to hear better


	Blind people tap unused brain to hear better

Mohir

10-23-2007 11:11 AM

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tags:

brain, blind

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<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/56b3993b-37d4-4bb2-babd-8ad50fe9d7a5/981C7D36-4510-47A5-8A1C-AE8F443D557A/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19626264.800&feedId=online-news_rss20" href="http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19626264.800&feedId=online-news_rss20" style="font-size: 11px;">www.newscientist.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19626264.800&feedId=online-news_rss20"><H2 class="inline">Blind people tap unused brain to hear better </H2></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19626264.800&feedId=online-news_rss20"><P>PEOPLE blinded early in life often develop better hearing than sighted people. Now it seems they do it by selectively taking over the parts of the visual system that are easiest to adapt.</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19626264.800&feedId=online-news_rss20"><P>In sighted people, an area of the brain called the medial occipital plays a crucial role in registering visual signals, by setting the threshold at which they are noticed by the brain. Now Alexander Stevens at Oregon Health & Science University has found that people blinded early in life co-opt this brain region to help detect sounds.</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19626264.800&feedId=online-news_rss20"><P>He played a series of sounds to blind subjects, each preceded by a cue. Brain scans showed that as they heard each cue warning them to pay attention, their medial occipital became more active, revealing that their brains use the same region that alerts them to visual signals to prime them to listen out for sounds (<I>The Journal of Neuroscience</I>, <A target="nsarticle" href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1669-07.2007" linkindex="59">DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1669-07.2007</A>).</P></blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/981C7D36-4510-47A5-8A1C-AE8F443D557A/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content8.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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