Visual sensory stimulation interferes with people's ability to echolocate object size.

ABSTRACT: Echolocation is the ability to use sound-echoes to infer spatial information about the environment. People can echolocate for example by making mouth clicks. Previous research suggests that echolocation in blind people activates brain areas that process light in sighted people. Research has also shown that echolocation in blind people may replace vision for calibration of external space. In the current study we investigated if echolocation may also draw on 'visual' resources in the sighted brain. To this end, we paired a sensory interference paradigm with an echolocation task. We found that exposure to an uninformative visual stimulus (i.e. white light) while simultaneously echolocating significantly reduced participants' ability to accurately judge object size. In contrast, a tactile stim

SUBMITTER: Thaler L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5638915 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature