Crucial insight into how the brain tracks and accumulates spatial information using echolocation has been gathered by scientists from Cardiff University and the Smith–Kettlewell Eye Research Institute in San Francisco (https://www.eneuro.org/content/13/4/ENEURO.0342-25.2026)....
Continue reading at Audiology Worldnews
✦ The floor
Discussion
Signed responses from readers of the wire.
No actionable change for clinical practice at this stage; findings are basic neuroscience on echolocation spatial processing and do not yet translate to hearing-aid fitting or auditory rehabilitation protocols.
Understanding how the brain accumulates spatial information through echolocation could inform future auditory training programs for blind individuals and may offer insights into auditory spatial processing relevant to hearing rehabilitation.
- 01Cardiff University and Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute researchers investigated the neuroscience of human echolocation.
- 02The study focused on how the brain tracks and accumulates spatial information from tongue-click echoes over time.
- 03Findings were published in the peer-reviewed journal eNeuro.
- 04Echolocation allows some blind individuals to perceive objects, distances, and shapes without vision.
- 05Results contribute to basic science understanding of auditory spatial processing in humans.
The brain can track and accumulate spatial information through echolocation using self-generated tongue clicks.
studypartially supported- Journal
- eNeuro
- Publication type
- research_article
- Evidence level
- 2b
- Population
- Individuals practicing human echolocation, likely including blind or visually impaired participants
- Intervention
- Echolocation via self-generated tongue clicks to perceive spatial information
Primary outcomes
Accuracy and mechanism of spatial information tracking via echolocation; Neural accumulation of spatial information from click-echo sequences