New research presented at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego shows that blind people can understand speech at ultrafast rates, well beyond what a sighted person can comprehend. Using brain imaging, the researchers discovered how they were able to do this. The parts of the brain that process hearing get re-wired to the part of the cerebral cortex that normally handles vision. This is explained in my post on the Scientific American website, but Scientific American was not able to include the audio clip of what such high-speed speech sounds like. Have a listen here, and read the story at Scientific American News on-line: “Why can some blind people process speech far faster than sighted persons: www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-can-some-blind-people -process
Blind people in the study could hear speech as fast as 25 syllables a second!
For those of us who are sighted, here is a transcript of the sound clips:
“Blackwater, now called Xe Services, was once the United States’ go-to contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has been under intense pressure since 2007, when Blackwater guards were accused of killing 17 civilians in Nisour Square in Baghdad. The company, its executives and personnel have faced civil lawsuits, criminal charges and congressional investigations surrounding accusations of murder and bribery. In April, federal prosecutors announced weapons charges against five former senior Blackwater executives, including its former president.”
My thanks to Dr. Ingo Hertrich, University of Tuebingen for generating these sound clips in English for readers to hear.
Thanks for the new English speech samples, Douglas! Some blind people I know confirmed that the 24 syllables per second sample is at their upper limit. I am sighted and max out already at the 14 sps sample, but perhaps I can blame it on not being a native English speaker – holding hopes that I would do better with Dutch.
Re your comments to your Scientific American article,
> But does such extraordinary ability come at a cost? This work is also interesting
> with respect to synesthesia. Do blind people see speech since auditory
> pathways get rewired to visual cortex?
Don’t know yet about cost or penalties, but some partial and preliminary answers to your questions can be found in
http://www.seeingwithsound.com/extra/cc2009_preprint.pdf
Best regards
By: Peter Meijer on December 26, 2010
at 7:47 pm
Fascinating. Read your piece in the Huffpost – also right on target and very good read when supported by scientific pursuit. I see lots of behavioral toxicity and many times the owner of the problem is not at all aware of how deep rude behaviours serve to telegraph intent.
My interest in sound pattern recognition is similar, characterizing musical phrases as methods of choice in the possession of the musician ( scoring film and tv music properly is best done when based on immediate cognitive responses )
Buying the book now. I hope you choose to do more in auditory response, since that retained memory is rather deep and sociocultural as well…
By: Jeff J on January 9, 2011
at 5:12 pm
Hi Tim, Sorry for the late response due to a glitch. Of course you can improve with practice, but no sighted person is known who can attain the listening speeds of these individuals who are using their visual cortex for auditory processing.
By: R. Douglas Fields on May 3, 2011
at 7:21 pm