Humans With Amazing Senses

Aug. 9, 2006 — -- When bats go out to hunt, they send out sonar signals at such high frequencies and in such rapid bursts that they can hear the signals bounce off mosquitoes in midair. They then zero in on the insects like laser-guided missiles. Dolphins use the same technique to find their dinners. It's called echolocation, a technique that uses sound to identify objects by the echoes they produce.

Fourteen-year-old Ben Underwood of Sacramento, Calif., is one of the few people known to use echolocation as a primary means of navigating the world on land. There's not even a hint of light reaching his brain. His eyes are artificial, but his brain has adapted to allow him to appraise his environment. He makes a "clicking" sound to communicate with objects and people around him.

Scientists have discovered that in the brains of the blind, the visual cortex has not become useless, as they once believed. When blind people use another sense -- touch or hearing, for example -- to substitute for sight, the brain's visual cortex becomes active, even though no images reach it from the optic nerve. Echolocation creates its own images.

"I can hear that wall behind you over there. I can hear right there -- the radio, and the fan," Ben says.

Ben says every object in his life talks to him in ways that no one else can hear or understand.

Forty-year-old Daniel Kish of Long Beach, Calif., also uses echolocation, and has become an expert on it, founding the World Access for the Blind, an organization that teaches others how to echolocate. Kish leads other blind people on mountain biking tours and hikes in the wilderness, visualizing and describing the picturesque sights around him through echolocating.

If you listen closely to Ben or Kish, you can hear how they find their way. Ben says he can distinguish where the curbs are as he cruises his neighborhood streets.

He can find the pole and the backboard on a basketball goal, and tell which is which by the distinctive echo each makes. Even though he can't see the goal he's aiming for, he can sink a basket. Ben doesn't remember how or when he began clicking, but he's developed his abilities to such an extent that aside from echolocation, he can rapidly discriminate the sounds in video games.