Abstract
Spatial representation is developed thanks to the integration of visual signals with the other senses. It has been shown that the lack of vision compromises the development of some spatial representations. In this study we tested the effect of a new rehabilitation device called ABBI (Audio Bracelet for Blind Interaction) to improve space representation. ABBI produces an audio feedback linked to body movement. Previous studies from our group showed that this device improves the spatial representation of space in early blind adults around the upper part of the body. Here we evaluate whether the audio motor feedback produced by ABBI can also improve audio spatial representation of sighted individuals in the space around the legs. Forty five blindfolded sighted subjects participated in the study, subdivided into three experimental groups. An audio space localization (front-back discrimination) task was performed twice by all groups of subjects before and after different kind of training conditions. A group (experimental) performed an audio-motor training with the ABBI device placed on their foot. Another group (control) performed a free motor activity without audio feedback associated with body movement. The other group (control) passively listened to the ABBI sound moved at foot level by the experimenter without producing any body movement. Results showed that only the experimental group, which performed the training with the audio-motor feedback, showed an improvement in accuracy for sound discrimination. No improvement was observed for the two control groups. These findings suggest that the audio-motor training with ABBI improves audio space perception also in the space around the legs in sighted individuals. This result provides important inputs for the rehabilitation of the space representations in the lower part of the body.
Highlights
The brain is constantly stimulated by different sensory information coming from the external world
It has been shown that the absence of vision, as in blind individuals, improves other auditory skills, such as horizontal sound localization (Lessard et al, 1998; King and Parsons, 1999; Röder et al, 1999; Gougoux et al, 2004; Doucet et al, 2005; Lewald, 2007) and relative distance discrimination (Voss et al, 2004; Kolarik et al, 2013a)
No improvement was observed in the other two groups of subjects which performed the training by moving the leg without sound or by listening to the sound moved by the experimenter. These results suggest that only the combination of audio feedback associated with body movement is useful to improve audio spatial representation around the legs in sighted individuals
Summary
The brain is constantly stimulated by different sensory information coming from the external world. Vision has a predominant role in the development of spatial cognition (Pasqualotto and Proulx, 2012; Gori, 2015) In agreement with this idea, it has been found that blind people are impaired in some aspects of sound localization, such as the localization of end point of a dynamic sound (Finocchietti et al, 2015b), the audio space bisection (Gori et al, 2014), the evaluation of the absolute distance (Kolarik et al, 2013b), the auditory spatial representations of the extrapersonal space in both: reverberant and anechoic environments, for speech, music and noise signals (Kolarik et al, 2017) and the vertical localization of a sound source (Zwiers et al, 2001). Other imaging studies provided an evidence for reduced connectivity between visual and auditory systems, as well as between visual and somatosensory systems (Liu et al, 2007; Yu et al, 2012; Burton et al, 2014), supporting instead the idea that these heightened abilities reflect re-programming of visual cortex for ‘‘metamodal’’ purpose (Burton et al, 2014)
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