Mind Tricks Explained

Seeing Sounds

What It Is: Aural vision. The blind can learn to "see" with the help of voice software that represents an object's height with pitch and its brightness with volume.


New Research Shows:There's more to vision than raw visual data about an object's brightness and height. Our brains have to be able to discern an object's depth and position as well-for example, your eyes naturally interpret a bright, tall object as being nearby. Neurologist Amir Amedi of Harvard Medical School demonstrated that the brain can learn to interpret sound in the same way it interprets light. He exposed subjects to a variety of objects and their corresponding sounds. With practice, they could "see" a grayscale world-the height, brightness, depth and position of objects-simply by listening to the software's version of their surroundings.


What It Means:Vision doesn't have to come from your eyes. As long as you train your brain to relate specific sensory information like sound to physical surroundings, those inputs can activate the brain's sight centers.