科学家揭示盲人具有非凡听力的原因.docVIP

双语:科学家揭示盲人具有非凡听力的原因 　　Blind people have been shown to recruit visual areas of the brain to pinpoint the direction of sounds. 　　The finding, published this week in PLoS Biology, gives the first clear link between superior hearing abilities in blind people and increased activity in the visual centres of their brains. 　　These results tell us about the plasticity of the brain, says neuroscientist Franco Lepore of the University of Montreal, Canada. He believes that when people who were born blind, or went blind at a young age, use noise to navigate their environment, their mental processing adapts. 　　Previous experiments have shown that people who lose their sight at an early age often excel at non-visual tasks, such as speech perception, verbal memory and musical ability. 　　Some scientists have claimed that blind people can pinpoint sound in space better than the sighted. But other researchers have failed to find this advantage. Lepore and his colleagues decided to investigate why only some blind people are better at locating noises. 　　The team tested 19 people, 12 of whom were born blind or had lost their sight at a very early age. Each participant sat in front of a semicircle of 16 loudspeakers that emitted noise bursts lasting a fraction of a second. 　　The researchers played sound out of a random speaker and then asked their subjects to identify its source. Participants used both ears in one set of tests, and only one ear in another. 　　To Lepores surprise, there were no differences among participants using both ears. We think that the reason why blind people were not better with both ears open was the task was too easy. The speakers were too far apart, he says. 　　But in the one-eared tests, five of the blind people were better at spotting the position of sounds. These five localized the loudspeakers position to within 15 degrees, even with one ear plugged. 　　None of the sighted subjects could do this; nor could seven of the blind ones. These participants always perc