Learning From and About: Echolocation and Brain Injury

Linking Echolocation and Brain Injury
Beautiful Image by Eric Casequin

Today the topic of ‘Brain Injury’ gets streeeeeeeeetched.

The reason for this is that I recently made two discoveries. One was that the Readers Digest magazine is still being published. While flicking through a copy I made a second discovery: an article about Echolocation.

I found it fascinating. People using a kind of human sonar to navigate their world.

I really wanted to share this discovery so I set out to find a way to link the topic echolocation with brain injury?  The following is what I came up with.

 

Attempting to Link Echolocation and Brain Injury

Once I put my mind to it the links leapt out at me:

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  • Echolocation highlights just how amazing the brain is and its capacity to learn new skills.
  • It demonstrates that sometimes, with training and determination, new skills and new brain pathways can work around difficulties.
  • It reminds us we do not fully use all our capacities. We could train ourselves to be more aware of our sensory capacities.
  • The brain and its functions can always surprise us – people who use echolocation have been found to use the vision areas rather than hearing part of the brain. (See the illustrations below)

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This is an extraordinary story of people finding a way to work around their limitations. Echolocation is apparently rarely found in human beings. Yet people have learned to use it and enhance their lives. Just as people living with brain injury find ways to work around their limitations and live with with courage.

 

About Echolocation

An online dictionary defines Echolocation as “determining the location of something by measuring the time it takes for an echo to return from it”. A skill that is more well known in birds and animals such as bats, dolphins, some species of whale.

The article I read was about Brian Borowski. Brian was born blind but learned to navigate his way around the world, using echolocation. Including riding a bicycle – out on the road. Then I went looking on the internet and discovered other people. I did not have to work to hard to find some useful links to brain injury. The people using echolocation had some wonderful strategies they were happy to share.

The brain during echolation
Image by Alan Thistle
Echo-related activity in the brain of an early-blind echolocator is shown on the left. There is no activity evident in the brain of a sighted person (shown on the right) listening to the same echoes

A Link is Made. Strategies are Learned from Echolocation and Brain Injury

The more I read, the more I realised there were strategies we could learn from the people who use this incredible skill.

Please share any other learnings you discover in the Comments below.

 

Stretch Yourself. Give it a Go. Work that brain.

(Generally I mean, not just trying Echolocation. Though it might be interesting to try it).

Another person who has learned the art of echolocation is Daniel Kish. In an article about Daniel and his skill, a quote leapt out at me:

“The main reason most of us don’t echolocate is simply that we’ve never tried. But we can learn to be more aware of our environment, and embrace the full capacity of our senses”.

I am not suggesting we all become expert echolocators but it does provide a very clear reminder of what the brain is capable of, if we are open to it, and work at it.

If a person without sight can learn to navigate their world by developing their inbuilt ‘sonar’ system, what else might the brain be capable of?

 

Pioneer. Don’t Be Afraid to Try Something New.

In the stories of people who became echolocators some described being discouraged from using it, and encouraged to use traditional means such as white canes. People who used echolocation persisted with another way.

Jen Milne, a graduate who is working with Melvyn Goodale (see below) states: “It’s not an extraordinary hearing ability. It’s different filtering. Echolocators pay attention to things we’ve learned to ignore.”

Image by Nancy Muller
Image by Nancy Muller

 

 

Neuroplasticity. It is New and It’s Important

We need to practice what we want to continue. “if you don’t use it you lose it”.

“In the brain, everything is basically connected with everything,” Lore Thaler (also working with Melvyn Goodale) says “Throughout our lives, connections between various parts of the brain are strengthened or weakened depending on how much we use them. It’s one reason why, in so many contexts, practice makes perfect.”

 

Practice and Find Ways to Build Confidence

As a child when learning about echolocation Brian Borowski would  “bang rocks together underwater in a steep-sided quarry pond, using the echoes to gauge its depth—and soon realized that the echoes returned four times faster because sound travels more quickly in water than air. “

“Something happens after a few days,” he says. “You feel more confident and you get a better sense of the world around you.”

 

Balanced Risk Taking is a Part of Development

Daniel Kish says “It’s the overall process of being willing to reach out into the environment and discover what is around them,” he says. He encourages parents to get out of the way — their natural instinct might be to protect their child from harm — even if it means they might get hurt.

“When a sighted child gets hurt we consider it to be unfortunate,” Kish says. “When a blind child gets hurt, we consider it to be tragic.” It’s a double standard that disadvantages a blind child, he says.

 

Keep Pushing the Boundaries

Daniel Kish explains that his work is more than teaching echolocation. It’s about a “no-limits philosophy, which challenges us to challenge what we think we know,” he says.

“To challenge every boundary, every box, every limitation that we’ve either put up ourselves or allow ourselves to be conditioned to accept.”

Daniel continues “My parents did not limit me, they did not restrict me from anything. They were not at all concerned about my blindness, and raised me just like any other child,” he says.  “My upbringing was all about total self-reliance,” he writes, “of being able to go after anything I desired.”

 

Examine the Assumptions that Underpin What You Do and Say

Individuals, families, and societies all have a  range of assumptions which they rarely examine, yet they affect everything we do. Hidden assumptions makes change difficult and can get in the way of supporting development.  Painful though it can be at times we each need to examine the assumptions we bring.

Daniel Kish states we should challenge what we think we know.

“Most blind kids hear a lot of negative talk. ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t move. No, here, let me help you.’ The message you get, if you’re blind, is you’re intellectually deficient, you’re emotionally deficient, you’re in all ways deficient.”

 

Other Resources About Echolocation

Melvyn Goodale  at the University of Western Ontario has documented interesting   research and fMRI of echolocation  along with other research on vision. This site and research is well worth exploring for more than just echolocation. Some interesting articles on vision and the brain and a information on the Brain and Mind Institute site.

You can view a short video about Daniel Kish on YouTube HERE