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Human echolocation: Basic mechanisms and neuroplasticity

人类回声定位：基本机制和神经可塑性

基本信息

批准号：
BB/M007847/1
负责人：
Lore Thaler
金额：
$ 52.23万
依托单位：
Durham University
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2016
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2016 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=BB%2FM007847%2F1
关键词：
Human echolocation Basic mechanisms neuroplasticity

项目摘要

The human brain has many amazing perceptual abilities. One of these is the ability to echolocate. To echolocate, an organism makes a sound, and listens to the returning echoes. Echolocation is best known from bats. In people it has received comparably little research attention, even though investigations in the 1940s already established the reality of this skill.Recent studies suggest that echolocation may be related to vision. For example, blind echolocation experts can sense their environment through echolocation in a way that seems uncannily similar to vision, and neuroimaging research has shown that blind echo experts use 'visual' brain areas to process echoes. Interestingly, and relatedly, even though echolocation is mediated through hearing, recent research suggests that there might be different processes involved. Recent echolocation research has also confirmed that young people can learn echolocation. Yet, even though there are increasing numbers of people with age related vision loss for whom echolocation might be useful, it has not been investigated how older people might learn it.Following up on these recent developments, the proposed research will investigate how echolocation is related to vision, and 'regular' spatial hearing, and it will investigate this in young and old people. The overarching goal is to advance our understanding of information processing in the human brain. The research has the potential to improve well-being of people with vision loss.The proposed research will make us of behavioural experiments and brain imaging techniques (magnetic resonance imaging, MRI). We will train blind and sighted, and young and old people to echolocate, and we will measure their echolocation behaviour and their brain activity and structure with MRI. Furthermore, we will measure how echolocation is related to people's 'regular' spatial hearing. We will do this by investigating if echolocation improves people's abilities to localize sound sources, and if people's echolocation accuracy is influenced by their expectations about the echolocation sounds.The impact strategy for the proposed research is based on communicating our scientific results to academics, professionals, and the general public. We propose to do this via presentation at scientific conferences, publication of articles in scientific and professional journals, public lectures, and working with the media to publicize our research, and through the creation of a website showcasing our findings. Furthermore, even though the research is focused on human brain and behaviour, our findings are expected to benefit research in engineering (remote sensing, signal acquisition and processing, development of assistive devices for blind people). In addition, the research is expected to inform echolocation research in non-human animals, and in this way it may lead to reduction of use of animals for research.Within the UK approx. 360,000 people are registered partially sighted / blind, and approx. 300,000 of these are older than 50 years. There is already scientific evidence that echolocation offers functional advantages to blind people, for example to detect and avoid obstacles during walking, or to navigate unfamiliar environments. Yet, within the UK (but also worldwide) echolocation is not endorsed for mobility and orientation training for blind people. The proposed research will advance scientific understanding of echolocation and add to existing scientific evidence demonstrating usefulness of echolocation for blind people. In combination with the proposed impact strategy the proposed research has the potential to increase acceptance of echolocation as part of mobility and orientation training for blind people and in this way to improve well-being of people with visual impairments.

人类的大脑有许多惊人的感知能力。其中之一就是回声定位的能力。为了进行回声定位，生物体发出声音，并听取返回的回声。回声定位最广为人知的是蝙蝠。尽管20世纪40年代的研究已经证实了这种技能的存在，但对人类的研究却很少受到关注。最近的研究表明回声定位可能与视觉有关。例如，盲人回声定位专家可以通过回声定位以一种与视觉惊人相似的方式感知他们的环境，神经成像研究表明，盲人回声专家使用“视觉”大脑区域来处理回声。有趣的是，尽管回声定位是通过听觉调节的，但最近的研究表明，可能有不同的过程参与其中。最近的回声定位研究也证实了年轻人可以学习回声定位。然而，尽管越来越多的人因年龄而丧失视力，回声定位可能对他们有用，但还没有研究老年人如何学习回声定位。根据这些最新进展，拟议的研究将调查回声定位与视觉和“常规”空间听觉的关系，并将调查年轻人和老年人的这一情况。总体目标是推进我们对人脑信息处理的理解。这项研究有可能改善视力丧失者的福祉。拟议的研究将使我们的行为实验和脑成像技术（磁共振成像，MRI）。我们将训练盲人和正常人，年轻人和老年人进行回声定位，我们将用核磁共振成像测量他们的回声定位行为和他们的大脑活动和结构。此外，我们将测量回声定位与人们的“常规”空间听力之间的关系。我们将通过调查回声定位是否提高了人们对声源的定位能力，以及人们对回声定位声音的期望是否会影响回声定位的准确性来实现这一目标。拟议研究的影响策略是基于将我们的科学成果传达给学术界、专业人士和公众。我们建议通过在科学会议上展示，在科学和专业期刊上发表文章，公开演讲，与媒体合作宣传我们的研究，以及通过创建一个网站来展示我们的发现来做到这一点。此外，尽管研究的重点是人类的大脑和行为，但我们的发现有望有益于工程研究（遥感、信号采集和处理、盲人辅助设备的开发）。此外，这项研究有望为非人类动物的回声定位研究提供信息，从而可能导致减少使用动物进行研究。在英国境内大约。36万人被登记为部分视力/失明，大约。其中30万辆车的寿命超过50年。已有科学证据表明，回声定位为盲人提供了功能优势，例如在行走中探测和避开障碍物，或者在不熟悉的环境中导航。然而，在英国（以及全世界），回声定位并不被认可用于盲人的行动和定向培训。拟议的研究将促进对回声定位的科学理解，并增加现有的科学证据，证明回声定位对盲人的有用性。与拟议的影响战略相结合，拟议的研究有可能增加对回声定位作为盲人行动和定向训练的一部分的接受程度，从而改善视力受损者的福祉。