Tactile maze solving in congenitally blind individuals

Léa Gagnon; Ron Kupers; Fabien C Schneider; Maurice Ptito

doi:10.1097/wnr.0b013e32833eaaf9

Tactile maze solving in congenitally blind individuals

Léa Gagnon, Ron Kupers, Fabien C Schneider, Maurice Ptito

Institut for Neurovidenskab

6 Citationer (Scopus)

Abstract

Vision is undoubtedly important for navigation although not essential as blind individuals outperform their blindfolded seeing counterparts in a variety of navigational tasks. It is believed that the blind's superior performance is because of their efficient use of proprioceptive signals and environmental cues such as temperature and echolocation. We hypothesize that by limiting these cues, blind individuals will lose their advantage compared with controls in spatial navigation tasks. We therefore evaluated the performance of blind and sighted individuals in small-scale, tactile multiple T mazes. Our results show that blindfolded sighted controls outperformed blind participants in the route-learning tasks. This suggests that, contrary to indoor large-scale spaces, navigational skills inside small-scale spaces benefit from visual experience.

Originalsprog	Engelsk
Tidsskrift	NeuroReport
Vol/bind	21
Udgave nummer	15
Sider (fra-til)	989-992
Antal sider	4
ISSN	0959-4965
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1097/wnr.0b013e32833eaaf9
Status	Udgivet - 27 okt. 2010

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10.1097/wnr.0b013e32833eaaf9

Citationsformater

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AU - Gagnon, Léa

AU - Kupers, Ron

AU - Schneider, Fabien C

AU - Ptito, Maurice

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Y1 - 2010/10/27

N2 - Vision is undoubtedly important for navigation although not essential as blind individuals outperform their blindfolded seeing counterparts in a variety of navigational tasks. It is believed that the blind's superior performance is because of their efficient use of proprioceptive signals and environmental cues such as temperature and echolocation. We hypothesize that by limiting these cues, blind individuals will lose their advantage compared with controls in spatial navigation tasks. We therefore evaluated the performance of blind and sighted individuals in small-scale, tactile multiple T mazes. Our results show that blindfolded sighted controls outperformed blind participants in the route-learning tasks. This suggests that, contrary to indoor large-scale spaces, navigational skills inside small-scale spaces benefit from visual experience.

AB - Vision is undoubtedly important for navigation although not essential as blind individuals outperform their blindfolded seeing counterparts in a variety of navigational tasks. It is believed that the blind's superior performance is because of their efficient use of proprioceptive signals and environmental cues such as temperature and echolocation. We hypothesize that by limiting these cues, blind individuals will lose their advantage compared with controls in spatial navigation tasks. We therefore evaluated the performance of blind and sighted individuals in small-scale, tactile multiple T mazes. Our results show that blindfolded sighted controls outperformed blind participants in the route-learning tasks. This suggests that, contrary to indoor large-scale spaces, navigational skills inside small-scale spaces benefit from visual experience.

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JO - NeuroReport

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ER -

Tactile maze solving in congenitally blind individuals

Abstract

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