14 Track 14

Unit 5

The amazing human body.

Chapter 2

Seeing with the Ears

Page 65

Seeing with the Ears

The human body is an amazing thing. People can train themselves to achieve unbelievable feats, from setting Olympic records to finding ways to overcome physical disabilities.

Ben Underwood is a great example of someone who trained his body to do something incredible. At the age of three, Ben went blind from retinal cancer, a type of eye cancer.

When Ben was about five years old, his mother noticed him making a clicking sound with his tongue that seemed to help him understand his surroundings.

This skill, known as echolocation, is normally used by animals with very sensitive hearing, like dolphins and bats, for communication and to find food.

They make sounds and listen for the echo made when the sound waves hit an object and bounce back. Doctors tested bands hearing ability, but found it was normal.

If Ben did not have superior hearing, how was he able to use echolocation?

Doctors used to believe blind people developed a sharper sense of hearing to help them overcome their loss of sight. Doctors did tests to try to confirm this, but just like in Ben’s case, the research showed that the test subjects generally had normal human hearing.

It was through brain scans that doctors began to understand the phenomenon of echolocation.

The scans show that when a blind person hears an echo, the parts of the brain that are related to vision are stimulated.

So even though blind people can’t see with their eyes, their brains are able to determine the shape and size of nearby objects. They move around an object, clicking and listening, to better understand its shape.

This refines the picture of the object in their minds. In this way, blind people come to “see” their environment.

By the time he was a teenager, Ben Underwood could safely ride a bike and skateboard around his neighborhood using echolocation. Of course, it took Ben years of training his mind and his senses to overcome his lack of sight.

Sadly, Ben passed away in 2009 at the age of 16, but he remains a shining example of what people are capable of if they are determined enough.

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