Crossmodal Cognition Lab on the BBC

Can you see with your ears?

"How well do you see what you hear?" Our new paper in Frontiers in Psychology (with Alastair Haigh, Dave Brown, and The vOICe inventor Peter Meijer) is now published, and receiving media attention with interviews on BBC Radio Bristol (pre-recorded piece at ~22.10 to 23.55, live interview starts at ~2:09.00) and BBC Radio 5 Live (starts at ~24.50), and in print.


BBC One segment on our research for The One Show
15 May 2013

Peter White trying The vOICe

Peter White, MBE, is a BBC presenter who has been blind since birth. He spent a day with Michael Proulx and Dave Brown to talk about sensory substitution devices for the visually impaired, and what such research is revealing about the neural and psychological basis for perception. He also spent a few hours learning to use The vOICe. The segment aired on The One Show, and Peter White also appeared live on the show to discuss his experience! It is available for viewing on the BBC iPlayer (starting around 28:30).

» Go to The One Show clip from BBC One

For more information on our research related to this segment, please see our following papers on the topics of sensory substitution and blindness:

Proulx, M. J., Brown, D. J., Pasqualotto, A., & Meijer, P. (in press). Multisensory perceptual learning and sensory substitution. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews. (special issue)
Haigh, A., Brown, D., Meijer, P., & Proulx, M. J. (2013). How well do you see what you hear? The acuity of visual-to-auditory sensory substitution. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00330 (Special Issue Cognitive Science Research Topic on Synaesthesia)
Proulx, M. J. (2013). Blindness: remapping the brain and the restoration of vision. Psychological Science Agenda. American Psychological Association.
Pasqualotto, A., Spiller, M. J., Jansari, A. S., & Proulx, M. J. (2013). Visual experience facilitates allocentric spatial representation. Behavioural Brain Research, 236, 175-179..
Pasqualotto, A. & Proulx, M. J. (2012). The role of visual experience for the neural basis of spatial cognition. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 36, 1179-1187.
Proulx, M. J. (2010). Synthetic synaesthesia and sensory substitution. Consciousness and Cognition, 19, 501-503.
Proulx, M. J., & Harder, A. (2008). Sensory Substitution. Visual-to-auditory sensory substitution devices for the blind. Dutch Journal of Ergonomics/ Tijdschrift voor Ergonomie, 33, 20-22.
Proulx, M. J., Stoerig, P., Ludowig, E., & Knoll, I. (2008). Seeing “where” through the ears: Effects of learning-by-doing and long-term sensory deprivation on localization based on image-to-sound substitution. PLoS ONE, 3, e1840.
Proulx, M. J. & Stoerig, P. (2006). Seeing sounds and tingling tongues: Qualia in synaesthesia and sensory substitution. Anthropology & Philosophy, 7, 135-151.

Ear-witness precision: Superior memory in the congenitally blind

Our work on memory for words and visual experience was featured recently in the national and international press (the article is Pasqualotto, A., Lam, J., & Proulx, M. J. (2013). Congenital blindness improves semantic and episodic memory. Behavioural Brain Research). Here is a live interview from BBC News 24, followed by links to radio interviews on BBC Radio 4, BBC Scotland, BBC World Service, and BBC Bristol.

» Go to the live clip from BBC News 24

BBC Radio 4 starts at 54.00 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01s46g3 BBC World Service starts at 14.00 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p017g5kc BBC Good Morning Scotland starts at 1:20.00 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01s0vqb

Michael J. Proulx, PhD, Senior Lecturer in Psychology
Crossmodal Cognition Laboratory Department of Psychology University of Bath