Auditory spatial representations of the world are compressed in blind humans

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• 作者：Andrew J. Kolarik ; Shahina Pardhan ; Silvia Cirstea…
• 关键词：Blindness ; Spatial hearing ; Auditory distance ; Multisensory plasticity ; Sound localization
• 刊名：Experimental Brain Research
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：February 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：235
• 期：2
• 页码：597-606
• 全文大小：700KB
• 刊物类别：Biomedical and Life Sciences
• 刊物主题：Neurosciences; Neurology;
• 出版者：Springer Berlin Heidelberg
• ISSN：1432-1106
• 卷排序：235

文摘

Compared to sighted listeners, blind listeners often display enhanced auditory spatial abilities such as localization in azimuth. However, less is known about whether blind humans can accurately judge distance in extrapersonal space using auditory cues alone. Using virtualization techniques, we show that auditory spatial representations of the world beyond the peripersonal space of blind listeners are compressed compared to those for normally sighted controls. Blind participants overestimated the distance to nearby sources and underestimated the distance to remote sound sources, in both reverberant and anechoic environments, and for speech, music, and noise signals. Functions relating judged and actual virtual distance were well fitted by compressive power functions, indicating that the absence of visual information regarding the distance of sound sources may prevent accurate calibration of the distance information provided by auditory signals.