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Spatial navigation with horizontally spatialized sounds in early and late blind individuals

Blind individuals often report difficulties to navigate and to detect objects placed outside their peri-personal space. Although classical sensory substitution devices could be helpful in this respect, these devices often give a complex signal which requires intensive training to analyze. New device...

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Autores principales: Paré, Samuel, Bleau, Maxime, Djerourou, Ismaël, Malotaux, Vincent, Kupers, Ron, Ptito, Maurice
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7909643/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33635892
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247448
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author Paré, Samuel
Bleau, Maxime
Djerourou, Ismaël
Malotaux, Vincent
Kupers, Ron
Ptito, Maurice
author_facet Paré, Samuel
Bleau, Maxime
Djerourou, Ismaël
Malotaux, Vincent
Kupers, Ron
Ptito, Maurice
author_sort Paré, Samuel
collection PubMed
description Blind individuals often report difficulties to navigate and to detect objects placed outside their peri-personal space. Although classical sensory substitution devices could be helpful in this respect, these devices often give a complex signal which requires intensive training to analyze. New devices that provide a less complex output signal are therefore needed. Here, we evaluate a smartphone-based sensory substitution device that offers navigation guidance based on strictly spatial cues in the form of horizontally spatialized sounds. The system uses multiple sensors to either detect obstacles at a distance directly in front of the user or to create a 3D map of the environment (detection and avoidance mode, respectively), and informs the user with auditory feedback. We tested 12 early blind, 11 late blind and 24 blindfolded-sighted participants for their ability to detect obstacles and to navigate in an obstacle course. The three groups did not differ in the number of objects detected and avoided. However, early blind and late blind participants were faster than their sighted counterparts to navigate through the obstacle course. These results are consistent with previous research on sensory substitution showing that vision can be replaced by other senses to improve performance in a wide variety of tasks in blind individuals. This study offers new evidence that sensory substitution devices based on horizontally spatialized sounds can be used as a navigation tool with a minimal amount of training.
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spelling pubmed-79096432021-03-05 Spatial navigation with horizontally spatialized sounds in early and late blind individuals Paré, Samuel Bleau, Maxime Djerourou, Ismaël Malotaux, Vincent Kupers, Ron Ptito, Maurice PLoS One Research Article Blind individuals often report difficulties to navigate and to detect objects placed outside their peri-personal space. Although classical sensory substitution devices could be helpful in this respect, these devices often give a complex signal which requires intensive training to analyze. New devices that provide a less complex output signal are therefore needed. Here, we evaluate a smartphone-based sensory substitution device that offers navigation guidance based on strictly spatial cues in the form of horizontally spatialized sounds. The system uses multiple sensors to either detect obstacles at a distance directly in front of the user or to create a 3D map of the environment (detection and avoidance mode, respectively), and informs the user with auditory feedback. We tested 12 early blind, 11 late blind and 24 blindfolded-sighted participants for their ability to detect obstacles and to navigate in an obstacle course. The three groups did not differ in the number of objects detected and avoided. However, early blind and late blind participants were faster than their sighted counterparts to navigate through the obstacle course. These results are consistent with previous research on sensory substitution showing that vision can be replaced by other senses to improve performance in a wide variety of tasks in blind individuals. This study offers new evidence that sensory substitution devices based on horizontally spatialized sounds can be used as a navigation tool with a minimal amount of training. Public Library of Science 2021-02-26 /pmc/articles/PMC7909643/ /pubmed/33635892 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247448 Text en © 2021 Paré et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Paré, Samuel
Bleau, Maxime
Djerourou, Ismaël
Malotaux, Vincent
Kupers, Ron
Ptito, Maurice
Spatial navigation with horizontally spatialized sounds in early and late blind individuals
title Spatial navigation with horizontally spatialized sounds in early and late blind individuals
title_full Spatial navigation with horizontally spatialized sounds in early and late blind individuals
title_fullStr Spatial navigation with horizontally spatialized sounds in early and late blind individuals
title_full_unstemmed Spatial navigation with horizontally spatialized sounds in early and late blind individuals
title_short Spatial navigation with horizontally spatialized sounds in early and late blind individuals
title_sort spatial navigation with horizontally spatialized sounds in early and late blind individuals
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7909643/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33635892
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247448
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