Brian: “It’s a high pressure stakes game
here…[laughing]” You’re probably wondering how I ended up
in this situation… …and why I’m walking around blindfolded
making weird noises. Hey smart people, Joe here. So recently, I
got to try something that made me feel like I basically had superpowers. And you can do it too, at home. But before we get there - you need to meet
my new friend, Molly Burke. Joe: So, I met you a couple of months ago
and immediately became fascinated with this guy. Molly: He’s my guide dog, Gallop! So when I was four-years - old, I was diagnosed
with a rare genetic disease called retinitis pigmentosa, slowly over time, I went blind. I lost the majority of my vision when I was
14, which was in 2008. Despite the fact that I still look 14 I am
now 25, and I’m a blind YouTuber now. Joe: You navigate the world in a really special
way that totally blew my mind when we met. Tell us about it. Molly: When I was seven-years-old, I started
taking O&M, or orientation and mobility training. That included passive echolocation. I learned how to pay attention to the sounds
that exist already. We live in a really loud world, I mean, listen
to this. We don’t usually notice every sound because
most of our brains are constantly tuning out what’s not important - there’s so much
noise out there, we have to be able to filter that information so it doesn’t sound like
a jumbled mess. But imagine being able to pick out any one
sound, and use only that sound to navigate any environment, even one you’ve never been
in before. As a sighted person, this seems impossible,
and honestly like a good way to hurt yourself. But with the help of a teacher in her O&M
program, Molly learned how to do it. Molly: So the way she would train me, is she
would blindfold me, she would put me on the sidewalk (with my cane, of course) and I would
walk down the sidewalk and she would have me count trees. Molly: So the best way I can kind of explain
it it is there’s sound, and then there’s a lack of sound. But really, a lack of sound still makes noise. Joe: Wow. Molly: We call them sound shadows. Sound shadows. Whoa. Am I right? It’s like there’s a whole world that sighted
people aren’t aware of. And that got me wondering, can anyone learn
echolocation? Well, we’re about to put my dumb ears to
the test. Echolocation is used by tons of different
animals, from whales to bats, to birds – even cute widdle shrews can do it. The species that are the best at it use active
echolocation - the same way that sonar works on ship. Instead of just listening, they first send
out a sound, like a click. Those sound waves sweep through the environment,
and if they hit something, they bounce back. By reading these echoes, the brain can actually
form a mental map. Like Marvel’s Daredevil. I prefer the real daredevil. I said the real daredevil. Perfection. The time between when the sound is made, and
when it bounces back helps the brain calculate things like distance, and the “quality”
of the sound bouncing back can even carry information like an object’s texture or
hardness. So I've always wanted to learn active echolocation, but I've only been trained in passive echolocation. Funny you should mention that Molly! Because we have a surprise for her. Joe: Molly? Molly: Yes? Joe: I told you I had a surprise for you… Molly: YES!? Joe: I have a guest here with us. I have Brian Bushway walking in with me Molly: Hello! Brian: Hello Molly! Brian works with a nonprofit called visioneers. And he’s a master echolator. Brian uses active echolocation like all those
other animals we mentioned. He teaches it too. And he assured me, that - with some practice
- anyone who can hear, can do this. Brian: Active echolocation is just passive
echolocation – what you’ve already been using – at a more enhanced level. So whether we send the brain patterns of light,
which is vision, or patterns of sound, the brain will still construct an image. Speaking of the brain - there’s an old idea,
one that a lot of people still believe, that when you get to some age your brain freezes
and it’s always going to be wired like that … forever. But what we’re learning is that the brain
is a lot more flexible and adaptable than we thought......we call this ability to adapt
and rewire “neuroplasticity.” What does it mean for a brain to be plastic
- it’s almost like rearranging, not physically, but parts of the brain can be reassigned to
handle new things or tasks. Scientists have found that blind people are
almost always a little better at echolocating than sighted people. Their brains had to develop new ways to handle
sensory information. That’s exactly what happened to Molly. Brian: If you’re already able to walk down
the sidewalk and passively detect trees, that means your hearing is super astute. That’s great…. so now when we teach you
this active signal, that’s going to bring more clarity to your image. Brian: So the visual analogy is this, we have
active echolocation, which we teach with a click ...”click,” “click” Molly: Wow that doesn’t sound like a tongue
click! Joe: That’s such a good tongue click! Brian: What gives you control over your environment
with the active click – it allows you to, almost like a screen refresher, so if you’re
running down the street, or riding your bike down the street, you can click, and you can
actually hear the back of parked cars or curbs. So, in a quiet, residential neighborhood we
can ride a bike and we actively click. Joe: You’re riding a bike, as a blind person,
which I could bet you - Molly: Not a tandem bike? Brian: Not a tandem bike Molly: I had to stop riding bikes when I was
eight, because I rode into a pole. And ever since then I’ve had to use a tandem
bike. And that was frustrating for me, and that’s
always one of the things, when people ask me what I miss about being sighted, I always
say the things that I miss the most are the things give you freedom. And I have seen blind people using active
echolocation where they’re skateboarding on their own, or playing basketball on their
own, or riding a bike on their own. And that’s what I would love to do. Joe: Well, speaking of learning echolocation,
I’m hoping Brian can take us through a few things, so we can show people what this education
looks like, what these tecniques looks like, and hopefully through my dumb sighted head,
show that anyone can do this. Brian: So when we talk about clicking, there’s
actually two sounds. There’s the click that’s made in our mouth,
and there’s the echo that’s reflected off of everything in this room. Brian: You want a good click to be clear,
clean, and sharp, and then you ignore it, because you’re really paying attention to
– Molly: what the feedback is? Brian: Exactly! Side note. Getting a good tongue click is hard. Clicking is what people like Brian use, but
really, you can navigate your environment with almost any sound you make. For the first demonstration, I’m going to
use a shhhh sound. I’m going to put my hands up in a flat area, and make that shhhh sound, and you’ll hear the
sound change as it comes in front of me. Brian: SHhhhh demo Should we try it? Brian: Sure, try it! Brian: So what we’ve just understood here
in a matter of seconds, is that you just understood when something was in front of you, vs. when
something was not. AND you could even hear when another person
did this. Once we had some practice with shhhh-ing,
we learned how to tell different echoes apart. Brian: Just, you know - by a hunch, what’s
your hypothesis, which do you think will be easier to hear, the hollow bowl or the flat
panel? Joe: The hollow bowl, I think, is going to
have a pretty distinct sound. Hollow sounds, like what comes out of the
bowl are easy to pick out, because the edges work like a funnel, sending the sound back
towards you. Listen to the difference. Brian: These are the things we want to note
because this hollow bowl is will represent entry ways, doorways. Most doors are placed in alcoves, and alcoves
create a hollow sound, very similar to a bowl. And when you understand how to listen and
recognize that, you know where to aim a guide dog or a cane. Brian: When I say go, I want you to click
and recognize where you hear your hollow space, on the right or on the left. Go. Joe: Ok left? Brian: Correct! Now keep clicking, and aim and try to reach
you hand and touch it. Joe: Oh no! Brian: Boom, that’s amazing for the first
time though. That’s directive reaching, that’s important,
it’s part of how we teach ourselves. Joe: Molly? Brian: Molly’s turn! Molly: Oh goodness. Joe: Ok I’m going to take my blindfold off
so I can experience this Molly: So, I’m intrigued to try the clicking,
because my instinct is so much to not click because I’m so used to listening to the
natural. Watching what Molly could do, even without
clicking was… woah. She told me things about the room that I would
never imagine someone who couldn’t see would know about, just by the sound it makes. I feel like there stuff behind us, like it's very heavy back there whereas it's like very open in front and to the left, it's far more open at least than behind us and to the right Use that to your advantage. Joe did not have that kind of sophistication
or understanding already. Your brain is already adapted. Molly: It’s to my right, but a little in
front of me. Brian: Ok, so I want you to click, and image
where it is, and reach out and touch it. Molly: Yesss!!!! I did it exactly! Brian: graduating to the next level! Molly: yayyy!!!! Brian: Here we go! So already in a matter of minutes and just
a couple exercises, you’re already noticing powerful information. When something is there, and when it isn’t. Molly: And I do notice, the time I didn’t
click and grab, I grabbed your hand. But the time I did click, I punched the middle. Brian: You were more precise. Molly: So, you’re right! It was, it was more precise. I’m already starting to see the difference
between just passively echolocation, and actively trying to do it. Brian describes seeing with soundwaves as
a kind of fuzzy geometry - and one place you can really see that fuzzy geometry, is in
a corner. Brian: Corners have such a unique quality,
because the sound triangulates inside a corner. Brian: Molly go ahead and try the shh thing
first, because anytime you have someone sighted people, to explain this, the shh will help
everyone. Molly: shhhhhh. Oh my god, it’s so weird, it’s like I
have a full image of like the half tunnel around me. Brian: Oh yeah! It’s amazing! It totally takes the shape, it’s such a
cool phenomenon. Brian: And the other thing we’re going to
talk about is edge detection. And what we’re going to do is look at what
does it sound like to actually face a wall, vs. the open space of the open door. And we’re really listening to the threshold
of the wall, and the open space. You’ll hear the external edge of the door
frame. Joe: Shhhhhhhhh. It’s right there, right in front of my nose. Joe: It’s almost like the sound goes mute,
in a way. Studies have shown that, especially for novice
echolocators (like me), moving the head around helps us understand the shape of the space
around them. One of the things I realized as we were practicing
is how tiring this was, my brain felt exhausted as if I’d been studying for three hours. It’s a workout for your brain. Brian: one of the great things we accomplished
is activating everyone’s perceptual system, getting the brain just curious about more
information. It’s easy to imagine echolocation as just
listening, but it’s more than that. The human brain wants sensory information,
and it’s constantly trying to construct a map of our environment, whether or not we’re
aware of it. The difference is which type of input people
give their brains. When scientists put blind echolocators into
MRI machines, and played recorded echoes back to them, the regions of the brain associated
with vision were activated – even though they weren’t getting any visual input. The parts of the brain that handle motion
and movement were turned on during active echolocation, even if the person wasn’t
moving at all. The weird part is that we don’t really understand
exactly how brains rewire like this, but it’s another sign of how adaptable the brain is. Molly: I’m curious how this would benefit
me in very crowded environments. When it’s very very crowded, guide dogs
can’t do their thing, canes can’t really do their thing, because it’s like hitting
a thing, hitting a thing. In really, really crowded environments most
blind people end up going sighted-guide. Every blind person needs to know about this,
every blind person needs to be able to have access to this. People like Brian and the rest of the visioneers
team are giving not just blind people, but all of us, a new way to experience the world. Studies are showing us that our abilities
go beyond what we’d expect. This experience changed the way I think about
my own brain, and about my own ideas of what it’s like to be blind. Joe: I’ve gone through my life thinking…. my perception of blindness, is that something
is missing. And this has shown me that I have been missing,
and tuning out this other sensory experience that is incredibly rich, and that can show
me different things about my environment that I was just ignoring and that’s the biggest thing I’ll take away from this, it's not something leaving, it's gaining something new Brian: I’ve also been asked that question,
you know, “Brian, if you could see again, what would that be like? Would you want to?” But the experiences that I’ve learned from
the quote unquote “vision loss” has actually taught me so much more about life and our
human capacity. I’ve had the great fortune of actually conquering
one of man’s greatest fears: the fear of darkness. The fact that we could all image acoustically
really challenges that whole notion. And so, many times sighted people say oh if
you can’t see the flashing lights that hypnotize, it’s a loss. And I say you, SIGHTED people, have not developed
your brain to actually understand the world and beauty of acoustic images. Molly: So they’re also missing out on something. That kind of levels the playing field, in
a way. Joe: Brian, thank you so much for letting
us experience this, my brain is tired in the best way possible. Molly, thank you so much for experiencing
this with us. Molly: This was amazing! Joe: Guys, stay curious, and I’m going to
keep pacticing. If you want to learn more… head on over
to Molly’s channel, I helped her dig into the science of her particular kind of blindness,
which was super interesting and I learned so much talking to her. Joe: and we’ve already figured out that
I’m going to be the first to die in the zombie apocalypse. Molly: Yep.
Doesn't it say in the game that they're blind so they use the echolocation?
Hey smart people, Joel there.
When you come across the body of the Clicker in the Goldstone Building Ellie makes a point about how its face looks.
The conversation went something like this.
E: So what are they, blind?
T: Sort of, they see using sound. If you hear one clicking you gotta hide, that's how they spot you.