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Early blindness attunes pitch: study

People who lose their sight before age two are more likely to develop the superior hearing needed to detect changes in pitch.

Talented musicians such as Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder both went blind at an early age, and many piano tuners are blind.

People who are blind are known to be better at orienting themselves by sound compared to sighted people.

Until now, it has been difficult for scientists to show some blind people are indeed better at hearing differences between notes.

Psychology Prof. Pascal Belin of the University of Montreal and his colleagues designed an experiment to test the link, taking into consideration when people became blind.

The researchers compared 26 blind and sighted people aged 21 to 46 who were asked to judge if a series of two sounds were rising or falling in pitch.

Half of the blind subjects were either born blind or lost their sight by age two.

They found those who lost their sight at any early age performed better at pitch recognition tests than sighted people, even when the speed of change was 10 times faster.

Those who became blind after age five, however, showed no difference compared to the sighted control subjects, the team said in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

Earlier experiments may have showed conflicting results because the researchers didn't take into account the age factor, Belin's team suggest.

They say their findings support the theory of brain plasticity, that is, the brain is more adaptable early in development.

[original article]

Posted by thinkum at July 16, 2004 01:27 PM