402 sats \ 0 replies \ @Coyote_Cosmico 25 Oct \ on: Anyone Can Learn Echolocation in Just 10 Weeks—And It Remodels Your Brain science
Really interesting... I watched a tv show about this years ago where the host profiled some blind people who were really good at the maze navigation using little handheld clickers to make a sound. Then the host learned to do it himself in a surprisingly short amount of time, though not nearly as good as them. It always stuck with me.
I suspect there are real cognitive benefits to developing unused parts of your brain like this. I've heard yoga teachers and similar use the term "the body is the mind", and I think they're on to something there.
There are a bunch of studies about how balance training could rapidly grow certain parts of the brain and it has impacts on memory and cognition.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5515881/
Also reminds me of the Guugu Yimidhirr people or Tzeltal Maya people who have an impossibly precise internal compass developed through their language. The human brain is capable of what seems like superhuman shit!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guugu_Yimithirr_people
The system of spatial coordination inscribed in the language is totally different from that in Western languages, where the reference system is relative with respect to the subject. In Guugu Yimidhirr, as in Kayardild space is rendered in absolute terms,[28] like the cardinal points, north, south, east, west, independent of whether something is in front of, behind, to the left or right of a person. The language thus provides them with a mental map, allowing quite a precise dead-reckoning of all points around them wherever they are.[29] For example, if your Guugu Yimidhirr guest, on leaving your house, had to inform you he or she had left her tobacco behind, they would be required to state grammatically in their native language something like: I left it on the southern table in the western side of your house.[30]
write
preview