The plasticity of the nervous system:

Subject: As a man thinketh,so is he: our actions are the outward manifestation of our thoughts

The formidable power of the mind(and spirit)

The most powerful determinant of our state of health (or disease) is our thoughts and feelings.Over and over it has been proven that one’s emotional and mental state will affect one’s physical state. Spirit ,mind, and body are inseparable and interdependent---working together as a whole.Our mental and physical health are highly intertwined.


We are what we think! Our thought processes have a direct effect upon our physiology and biochemistry ,and impact the function of every cell of our body.Every cell has receptors and is capable of receiving information from other cells ,and adjusting it’s function in response to this input/communication/interaction.
It has been repeatedly shown that our nervous system directly influences our immune system.
Be careful what you choose to think, feel, or give your attention to.
When the attention is wholly concentrated (when thought,feelings and actions are in alignment)it will work wonders wherever it may be directed. Thoughts are energy, and as such will have an effect.A thought expressed/manifest into the external world has consequences.Think of thoughts as behavioral impulses--as the precursors of action. Therefore choose those thoughts wch will have a positive consequence.You have a choice! Choose well! (see "the real meaning of "pre-emption")
People who are hopeful,optimistic,appreciative and positive in their thinking and attitude, experience illness much less often and live longer than people whose thoughts and feelings are predominantly negative.Doubt,guilt,shame,self-blame undermine our power. Negative emotions of fear, depression, anger or resentment indicate that you’re thinking about what you don’t want in your life.So you need to change the focus of your thoughts from the negative to the positive.When we cultivate positive energy and positive emotions we feel better and enjoy life more.
Our thoughts create our reality. By our thoughts we create the events of our life's experience. That is, what you think literally becomes your life.If we do not become more conscious of the consequences of our thoughts we doom ourselves to suffering. Since we create our own lives by our thoughts ,we need to be more conscious of what we are creating--what we are making out of our life.What are the feelings, and thoughts(belief system)that have brought you to the life you are living?
The universe reflects back your thoughts as your life experience.
The energy you put into the world -- both good and bad -- is exactly what comes back to you.You get back according to what you give.We get out of life according to what we put into it. This means you create the circumstances of your life with the choices you make every day.
We determine the function of our own cells by our thinking. Therefore we must make a conscious effort to be positive,and to cultivate positive thoughts and emotions wch will promote wellness.
"Chronic stress appears to have the potential to shorten the life of cells, at least immune cells," lead author Elissa Epel of the University of California at San Francisco said in a statement.
"The results were striking," added co-author Elizabeth Blackburn, also of UCSF.
The researchers studied 58 women, 19 of whom were mothers of healthy children and 39 who were tending chronically ill children. They reported that "the exact mechanism that connect the mind and the cell are unknown."
The researchers said they will now begin work to see if other types of cells are affected by stress.

The brain changes in response to our thoughts and experience: By our thoughts and will we create our own consequences and determine our own fate .The plasticity of the brain places an immense personal responsibility upon each one of us to create and sustain the best brain possible!

Recent research has elucidated some of the mechanism behind the "placebo effect"
(and psychosomatic illness) formerly explained as a psychological reaction--we believe something will work and so we believe that we feel better.A positive placebo effect is more likely in persons who truely believe that a treatment will work!
The most important characteristic of a healer(such as JC)is the expectation (hope) of a positive outcome.The role of the healer in eliciting self-healing is to instill the positive expectation of getting better, This expectation elicits the "placebo effect".Thus expectation plays a crucial and immense role in our health and well-being. (see "the power of belief")
Our thoughts/beliefs produce real changes in the brain.
The brain releases dopamine (happy hormone) in response to an expectation of a reward (something good).
A recent study showed that anticipating/expecting that an anti-pain medication will be effective,actually triggers the brain's endorphin system. The brain secreted more endorphins to block pain receptors and caused the volunteers to feel better(resulted in measurable pain reduction). Under hypnosis pain perception can be blocked out while b.p. and h.r. remain normal --even during surgery.This clearly demonstrates a mind/body connection.Our thoughts and emotions induce changes in brain chemistry.
So pump up your endorphins and "happy hormones" with positive thoughts and attitudes!
There is no doubt that our thoughts have cellular and molecular effects/correlates also in instances of depression and anxiety/fear/stress.
The mind is not localized exclusively to the millions of cells in the brain.Nerve cells penetrate every part of the body. Therefore the mind includes the whole body.
Awareness resides in every cell of the body!
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For more information on the power of positive thinking see
Rhonda Byrne's book "The Secret"
http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Rhonda-Byrne/dp/1582701709

or Lynne McTaggart's book "The Intention Experiment"

"The Secret" is teaching basically the old Adage "What you think about you bring about".The Secret repeats what all spiritual leaders, including JC, have told us: over time you become what you think about the most:

It is done unto you as you believe. (JC)

And I say unto you, Ask and it shall be given unto you. (JC)

From the Religious Science books:

"When we use our creative imagination in strong faith, it will create for us, out of the One Substance, whatever we have formed in thought. In this way man becomes a Co-Creator with God."

From the Hindu holy book:

One's own thought is one's world. What a person thinks is what he becomes. That is the eternal mystery. - Upanishads


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Does this mean that if we think right that nothing horrific will happen in our life,and we will never again feel sorrow? Does it mean that if our life's experience is less than joy-filled, that there is something wrong with our thinking,or that we are paying for something we did wrong in our past?Or that the universe is simply malicious and out to get us ,despite our best efforts?
Some life events (such as natural disasters)are outside our control,random, or occur with no reason..
The principle of "the secret" requires us to take responsibility for the aspects of our lives over wch we do have control.Our response to an uncontrollable event is always within our control.Our happiness and our health depend more upon self-mastery(mastery over our inner experience) than upon mastery over the world(external events and circumstances).We can't control the environment around us but we can certainly impact it,and we can choose how we're going to respond to it.Because we cannot control the thoughts and behaviour of others ,we'd best concentrate our effort on carefully managing our own thoughts,feelings, and actions.
Awareness of the causal relationship between thought and action will hopefully make us more conscious of our thoughts and feelings and this will enable us to prevent the outward expression of those thoughts and feelings likely to give birth to negative consequences.
When things don't turn out as we would like them to, it is very tempting to assume that had we done things differently, or thrown good thoughts out to the universe the story would have had a happier ending. ... There seem to be two elements involved in our readiness to feel guilt. The first is our strenuous need to believe that the world makes sense, that there is a cause for every effect and a reason for everything that happens. ... The second element is the notion that we are the cause of what happens, especially the bad things that happen. It seems to be a short step from believing that every event has a cause to believing that every disaster is our fault.Not all events are within our control.


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How Thinking Can Change the Brain
Wall Street Journal
Friday January 19, 2007

Dalai Lama helps scientists show the power of the mind to sculpt our gray matter
Although science and religion are often in conflict, the Dalai Lama takes a different approach. Every year or so the head of Tibetan Buddhism invites a group of scientists to his home in Dharamsala, in Northern India, to discuss their work and how Buddhism might contribute to it.
In 2004 the subject was neuroplasticity, the ability of the brain to change its structure and function in response to experience. The following are vignettes adapted from "Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain," which describes this emerging area of science:
The Dalai Lama, who had watched a brain operation during a visit to an American medical school over a decade earlier, asked the surgeons a startling question: Can the mind shape brain matter?
Over the years, he said, neuroscientists had explained to him that mental experiences reflect chemical and electrical changes in the brain. When electrical impulses zip through our visual cortex, for instance, we see; when neurochemicals course through the limbic system we feel.
But something had always bothered him about this explanation, the Dalai Lama said. Could it work the other way around? That is, in addition to the brain giving rise to thoughts and hopes and beliefs and emotions that add up to this thing we call the mind, maybe the mind also acts back on the brain to cause physical changes in the very matter that created it. If so, then pure thought would change the brain's activity, its circuits or even its structure.
One brain surgeon hardly paused. Physical states give rise to mental states, he asserted; "downward" causation from the mental to the physical is not possible. The Dalai Lama let the matter drop. This wasn't the first time a man of science had dismissed the possibility that the mind can change the brain. But "I thought then and still think that there is yet no scientific basis for such a categorical claim," he later explained. "I am interested in the extent to which the mind itself, and specific subtle thoughts, may have an influence upon the brain."
The Dalai Lama had put his finger on an emerging revolution in brain research. In the last decade of the 20th century, neuroscientists overthrew the dogma that the adult brain can't change. To the contrary, its structure and activity can morph in response to experience, an ability called neuroplasticity. The discovery has led to promising new treatments for children with dyslexia and for stroke patients, among others.
But the brain changes that were discovered in the first rounds of the neuroplasticity revolution reflected input from the outside world. For instance, certain synthesized speech can alter the auditory cortex of dyslexic kids in a way that lets their brains hear previously garbled syllables; intensely practiced movements can alter the motor cortex of stroke patients and allow them to move once paralyzed arms or legs.
The kind of change the Dalai Lama asked about was different. It would come from inside. Something as intangible and insubstantial as a thought would rewire the brain. To the mandarins of neuroscience, the very idea seemed as likely as the wings of a butterfly leaving a dent on an armored tank.
* * *
Neuroscientist Helen Mayberg had not endeared herself to the pharmaceutical industry by discovering, in 2002, that inert pills -- placebos -- work the same way on the brains of depressed people as antidepressants do. Activity in the frontal cortex, the seat of higher thought, increased; activity in limbic regions, which specialize in emotions, fell. She figured that cognitive-behavioral therapy, in which patients learn to think about their thoughts differently, would act by the same mechanism.
At the University of Toronto, Dr. Mayberg, Zindel Segal and their colleagues first used brain imaging to measure activity in the brains of depressed adults. Some of these volunteers then received paroxetine (the generic name of the antidepressant Paxil), while others underwent 15 to 20 sessions of cognitive-behavior therapy, learning not to catastrophize. That is, they were taught to break their habit of interpreting every little setback as a calamity, as when they conclude from a lousy date that no one will ever love them.
All the patients' depression lifted, regardless of whether their brains were infused with a powerful drug or with a different way of thinking. Yet the only "drugs" that the cognitive-therapy group received were their own thoughts.
The scientists scanned their patients' brains again, expecting that the changes would be the same no matter which treatment they received, as Dr. Mayberg had found in her placebo study. But no. "We were totally dead wrong," she says. Cognitive-behavior therapy muted overactivity in the frontal cortex, the seat of reasoning, logic, analysis and higher thought.. The antidepressant raised activity there. Cognitive-behavior therapy raised activity in the limbic system, the brain's emotion center. The drug lowered activity there.
With cognitive therapy, says Dr. Mayberg, the brain is rewired "to adopt different thinking circuits."
* * *
Such discoveries of how the mind can change the brain have a spooky quality that makes you want to cue the "Twilight Zone" theme, but they rest on a solid foundation of animal studies. Attention, for instance, seems like one of those ephemeral things that comes and goes in the mind but has no real physical presence. Yet attention can alter the layout of the brain as powerfully as a sculptor's knife can alter a slab of stone.
That was shown dramatically in an experiment with monkeys in 1993. Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, rigged up a device that tapped monkeys' fingers 100 minutes a day every day. As this bizarre dance was playing on their fingers, the monkeys heard sounds through headphones. Some of the monkeys were taught: Ignore the sounds and pay attention to what you feel on your fingers, because when you tell us it changes we'll reward you with a sip of juice. Other monkeys were taught: Pay attention to the sound, and if you indicate when it changes you'll get juice.
After six weeks, the scientists compared the monkeys' brains. Usually, when a spot on the skin receives unusual amounts of stimulation, the amount of cortex that processes touch expands. That was what the scientists found in the monkeys that paid attention to the taps: The somatosensory region that processes information from the fingers doubled or tripled. But when the monkeys paid attention to the sounds, there was no such expansion. Instead, the region of their auditory cortex that processes the frequency they heard increased.
Through attention, UCSF's Michael Merzenich and a colleague wrote, "We choose and sculpt how our ever-changing minds will work, we choose who we will be the next moment in a very real sense, and these choices are left embossed in physical form on our material selves."
The discovery that neuroplasticity cannot occur without attention has important implications. If a skill becomes so routine you can do it on autopilot, practicing it will no longer change the brain. And if you take up mental exercises to keep your brain young, they will not be as effective if you become able to do them without paying much attention.
* * *
Since the 1990s, the Dalai Lama had been lending monks and lamas to neuroscientists for studies of how meditation alters activity in the brain. The idea was not to document brain changes during meditation but to see whether such mental training produces enduring changes in the brain.
All the Buddhist "adepts" -- experienced meditators -- who lent their brains to science had practiced meditation for at least 10,000 hours. One by one, they made their way to the basement lab of Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He and his colleagues wired them up like latter-day Medusas, a tangle of wires snaking from their scalps to the electroencephalogra ph that would record their brain waves.
Eight Buddhist adepts and 10 volunteers who had had a crash course in meditation engaged in the form of meditation called nonreferential compassion. In this state, the meditator focuses on unlimited compassion and loving kindness toward all living beings.
As the volunteers began meditating, one kind of brain wave grew exceptionally strong: gamma waves. These, scientists believe, are a signature of neuronal activity that knits together far-flung circuits -- consciousness, in a sense. Gamma waves appear when the brain brings together different features of an object, such as look, feel, sound and other attributes that lead the brain to its aha moment of, yup, that's an armadillo.
Some of the novices "showed a slight but significant increase in the gamma signal," Prof. Davidson explained to the Dalai Lama. But at the moment the monks switched on compassion meditation, the gamma signal began rising and kept rising. On its own, that is hardly astounding: Everything the mind does has a physical correlate, so the gamma waves (much more intense than in the novice meditators) might just have been the mark of compassion meditation.
Except for one thing. In between meditations, the gamma signal in the monks never died down. Even when they were not meditating, their brains were different from the novices' brains, marked by waves associated with perception, problem solving and consciousness. Moreover, the more hours of meditation training a monk had had, the stronger and more enduring the gamma signal.
It was something Prof. Davidson had been seeking since he trekked into the hills above Dharamsala to study lamas and monks: evidence that mental training can create an enduring brain trait.
Prof. Davidson then used fMRI imaging to detect which regions of the monks' and novices' brains became active during compassion meditation. The brains of all the subjects showed activity in regions that monitor one's emotions, plan movements, and generate positive feelings such as happiness. Regions that keep track of what is self and what is other became quieter, as if during compassion meditation the subjects opened their minds and hearts to others.
More interesting were the differences between the monks and the novices. The monks had much greater activation in brain regions called the right insula and caudate, a network that underlies empathy and maternal love. They also had stronger connections from the frontal regions to the emotion regions, which is the pathway by which higher thought can control emotions.
In each case, monks with the most hours of meditation showed the most dramatic brain changes. That was a strong hint that mental training makes it easier for the brain to turn on circuits that underlie compassion and empathy.
"This positive state is a skill that can be trained," Prof. Davidson says. "Our findings clearly indicate that meditation can change the function of the brain in an enduring way."

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Meditators have more grey matter, study finds.
Meditation practice found to thicken vital brain areas

Sharon Kirkey
CanWest News Service


Monday, November 14, 2005


People who meditate have thicker brains, according to scientists who believe they have found the first structural evidence that meditation may increase grey matter.
Using magnetic resonance imaging, Boston researchers found that parts of the brain important for attention and sensory processing -- how we take in and make sense of things -- were thicker in meditators.
While all were extensively experienced in Buddhist insight meditation, "these are normal people with jobs and families" who meditated, on average, 40 minutes a day, said Dr. Jeremy Gray, assistant professor of psychology at Yale University and co-author of the study.
"You don't have to be a monk to see these changes in the actual structure of the brain."
The sample size was small -- just 35 people -- and so were the differences in brain thickness.
"It's not like they grew a new chunk of the brain," Dr. Gray said.
"These were not huge differences but they were statistically significant. The exciting part was that there was any difference at all."
Supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the MIND Institute and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the research is published in the journal NeuroReport. It was presented yesterday at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington, D.C.
Earlier research has found that transcendental meditation lowers blood pressure and reduces cholesterol and hardening of the arteries. A study published in May in the American Journal of Cardiology found transcendental meditation reduces death rates by 23%.
People who meditate report less stress, and scientists have linked long-term stress to shrinking of the part of the brain involved in memory and learning.
By contrast, meditation might promote brain "plasticity" -- the ability to be moulded or shaped.
Studies, mostly in Buddhist monks, have found meditation changes brain activity as measured by an EEG.
The Boston scientists hypothesized that it might change the brain's actual physical structure, too.
Led by Dr. Sara Lazar, of the Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, the researchers measured cortical thickness in 20 people trained in Buddhist insight meditation, a popular form of the mental exercise that does not use mantra or chanting but rather focuses on "mindfulness," being aware of sensations, feelings and state of mind.
The average age was 38, and people had, on average, nine years of meditation experience. Two were full-time meditation teachers.
They were matched by age, gender and education to 15 people who had never meditated or done yoga.
MRI studies found parts of the cerebral cortex, the outer layer of the brain, were thicker in those who meditated. The biggest difference was in the insula, a part of the brain that is "not so linked to higher cognition but more to emotion and internal perception of body state -- breathing, heart rate, emotions," Dr. Gray said.
Changes in breathing rate -- one of the effects of regular meditation is a significant drop in respiration rate -- were also related to thickness in one of the brain regions.
They also found evidence the mental exercise might slow age-related thinning of the frontal cortex.
"Our initial results suggest that meditation may be associated with structural changes in areas of the brain that are important for sensory, cognitive and emotional processing," the authors write in NeuroReport.
The findings need to be validated by more extensive studies. It's also possible that people with more cortical thickness are, for whatever reason, attracted to meditation to begin with.
What's more, the researchers didn't look at changes in the brain over time.
However, Dr. Gray said people who might otherwise be skeptical of meditation may now "be more open to doing a meditation or stress reduction workshop on their lunchtime."
© National Post 2005

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"Before we can realize God we must first create the neural network that is capable of experiencing Him".
--(the unsealed) Bok of Ultimate Wisdom

Growing your brain as well as keeping your body fit requires continuous nurturing effort!
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http://www.alsearsm d.com/content/

Your Genetic Code Is Not Carved in StoneBy Al Sears, MD

New research is revealing how your environment actually changes your genetics - and it's putting you in the driver's seat.
In November, the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute released the results of their groundbreaking study. They found that a mother's diet during pregnancy not only affects her child, but also her child's offspring.
This means that the lifestyle choices a woman makes can affect several generations of children - a revolutionary idea that flies in the face of conventional wisdom.

For more than 150 years - since the time of Darwin - scientists have believed that any changes to an organism cannot be passed on to the next generation. According to strict Darwinism, if you were to change your diet, lose weight, and become super-fit, your children would not benefit from your efforts. But we now know there is something more at play: the "epigenome." The epigenome plays a powerful role in your health... and could make the difference between whether or not you "inherit" heart disease or diabetes or something else.

Scientists in an emerging field of research - epigenetics - have discovered that your genes are only 15 percent of the total genetic material you get from your parents. For example, your genes give you many individualizing traits like blue eyes or brown hair. The remaining 85 percent - the epigenome - is a scaffolding of proteins that surround your DNA's double-helix pattern.
As it turns out, this "scaffolding" functions as an interface that interacts with your environment. Based on the lifestyle choices you make, the epigenome has the power to turn genes on or off, changing the way your body translates your genetic coding into the proteins that make up YOU.

The Children's Hospital Oakland study, lead by Dr. David Martin, split genetically identical pregnant mice into two groups. The mice had been bred in a way that gave the scientists the ability to monitor a gene that determined both the color of their coats and their tendency to develop chronic disease. So, by tracking coat color, they were able to follow the effects of vitamin supplementation across two generations of offspring.

The first group of mice received a standard diet. The second group received the same diet, with the added benefit of supplemental vitamin B12, folate, choline, and zinc. When the babies were born, the females from both groups were mated and fed identical diets with no supplements. When the offspring gave birth, Dr. Martin's team discovered that the original mice that had the diet with extra vitamins passed the benefits on to both their children and grandchildren.

Findings like these have powerful implications in both directions. It means that, by making healthy choices, your efforts can have a positive effect not only on your children but on your grandchildren as well. On the other hand, a diet of fast food and sodas will not only wreck your own health, it could predispose future generations to chronic diseases like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.
That helps to explain why so many schoolchildren suffer from high blood pressure and low HDL (good cholesterol) . The poor dietary choices their parents made are coming home to roost.

This discovery gives us new insight into a long-standing debate between Charles Darwin and a guy you may never have heard of - French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.
Darwin's theory, which has been shaping the direction of modern science, can be summed up in a few words: Genes cannot be affected by the outside world. In other words, your lifestyle choices have no effect on your genetic code or how those genes are expressed.

But Lamarck believed that if an organism changes during its life in order to adapt to its environment, those changes would be passed on to its offspring - and Dr. Martin's study is one of several that are proving he was correct.
So, guess what? It looks like you're no longer a "victim" of your genetic programming. If, for example, if you decide to exercise vigorously to develop new muscle, it now appears that it's possible for you to pass on a predisposition to build muscle with exercise to your children... and perhaps even further down your line of descendants.

Conscious decisions to improve your health will interact with your epigenome. In turn, the proteins in your epigenome can turn off genes that would have otherwise expressed themselves as disease in your descendents.
Instead of the old model, think of your genetic code as a library. You have thousands of choices, but you never check out all of the books. The epigenome interacts with your environment and your choices to determine which books to "read."

Your Genetic Code Is Not Carved in Stone
Vitamins like E, C, and A send messages to your genes that normalize cell division. This alone can aid in preventing many forms of cancer.
For vitamins E and C, I recommend taking more than the U.S. government suggests. Start with 100 IUs of vitamin E and 2,000 mg of vitamin C daily.

Here are four other nutrients that powerfully support detoxification and proper genetic expression:
Vitamin B12: 500 to 1,000 mcg daily
Folic acid: 500 to 1,000 mcg daily
Vitamin B6: 10 to 20 mg daily
Betaine: 200 to 1,000 mg daily

Don't sit back and allow "bad genes" to ruin your health. Take action and make yourself and future generations healthier.

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In western culture where prevailing models for understanding the world (and ourselves) are materialistic and mechanistic ,it is refreshing (it gives one hope) to know that all things are not written in stone!


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see "The brain that changes itself" --norman doidge

http://www.normandoidge.com/normandoidge/MAIN.html

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When a person loses their eyesight the brain re-wires neuronal pathways and directs sense data from other sensory modalities(such as the tactile and auditory senses) to the unused visual cortex...so that the blind person learns to see the world with his ears

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Echolocation allows blind to 'see' using sound

CTV.ca News Staff
 
Updated: Wed. May. 25 2011 6:15 PM ET

Dolphins, bats and other creatures use echolocation to find their way through dark waters or dark skies. And it seems humans can as well, to see through the darkness of blindness.
Daniel Kish lost his sight to retinal cancer as a baby, but uses tongue "clicks" to help him "see" objects. He makes the sounds as he moves about and listens for the echoes as they bounce back.
Just by listening to echoes, Kish can tell how far away an object is, how large it is and how "dense" or deep it is. He can tell the difference between a wall in front of him, and a bush or pole beside him.
Kish has refined the technique so well over a lifetime that he can even ride a bike without bumping into anything.
When Melvyn A. Goodale at the University of Western Ontario's Centre for Brain and Mind heard about Kish, he was intrigued.
"What went through our minds was, ‘My goodness, how is his brain allowing him to do this?' We assume it's a case of some sort of neuroplasticity, something in his brain changed as a consequence of learning how to echolocate," Goodale tells CTV News.
Goodale was able to convince Kish, along with another blind man who learned the technique as an adult, to conduct a couple of experiments with them.
Through brain scans, the researchers discovered that the two men use what is normally the "visual" part of their brain to process the clicks and echoes, to envision the hazards around them.
While it's long been known that unused brain areas can get "recruited" to do other functions, the researchers say this study is the first to show that the visual brain areas in blind people can still play an important role.
This study appears this month in the scientific journal, PLoS ONE.
To study how Kish's brain had re-wired itself, Goodale's team recorded Kish and the other blind man as they made clicks in front of a number of objects outdoors. They also recorded the echoes that came back.
Goodale said he was amazed at what Kish could do.
"If you put a pole in front of him and then moved it only three degrees to the side, by using clicks and echoes, he can tell that you've moved it. He can tell that it's changed. So his accuracy is amazing," Goodale told CTV.
After making their recordings, researchers then placed the men in a functional MRI machine (magnetic resonance imaging) and played the recording of their clicks and resulting echoes. They found that the men could identify the objects just by listening to the recordings.
What's more, the brain scans revealed that the two men were processing the clicks in the visual cortex of their brains.
"What this tells us is that the visual cortex can be exploited by the auditory system. We can use parts of the brain that are normally devoted for vision to process auditory information when visual information is removed," Goodale said.
The researchers then conducted the same experiments in two people who weren't blind. Not only could these individuals not perceive objects through echolocation, their brains didn't show any activity in the visual areas when they listened to the recordings.
Interestingly, the brain region that normally processes sound was not differently active between any of the study participants.
Goodale said it's clear that echolocation enables blind people to do things that are otherwise thought to be impossible without vision.
"Clearly, echolocation is quite liberating for someone who can do it," he said.
Kish now regularly trains other blind people on his echolocation technique, which he calls FlashSonar. Through his non-profit organization, World Access for the Blind, he has taught hundreds of people how to "see" with their ears.
With a report from CTV medical specialist Avis Favaro and producer Elizabeth St. Philip