Humans show bat-like skills using mouth-click echolocation
It may sound like a scene from "Nosferatu," but research from the University of East Anglia shows that humans can use bat-like echolocation skills to judge the distance of objects. The new study reveals that, just like bats navigating in the dark, humans too can rely on the echoes of mouth clicks to gauge how far away objects are. While humans may not match the precision of these nocturnal navigators, the study, published in Experimental Brain Research, shows that with simple tools like mouth clicks, we can tap into a surprisingly effective form of spatial awareness.
How the echolocation of bats has shaped their skulls | Natural History Museum
Scientists are trying to understand how this extraordinary sense is changing the structure of bat skulls.
4-Feb-2026
Elusive beaked #whales off the #Louisiana coast may sometimes be diving right to the #seafloor, finds new 3D acoustic technology which accurately pinpoints their locations using their #echolocation clicks
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1114393
#science #SoundscapeEcology #ecology #marineBiology #mammals
Elusive beaked whales off the Louisiana coast may sometimes be diving right to the seafloor, finds new 3D acoustic technology which accurately pinpoints their locations using their echolocation clicks
Elusive beaked whales off the Louisiana coast may sometimes be diving right to the seafloor, finds new 3D acoustic technology which accurately pinpoints their locations using their echolocation clicks
🦇🤖 To learn how #bats find tiny #insects on leaves in a crowded #jungle, researchers built a specialized #robot that uses #echolocation just like the real thing.
The experiments with the "robo-bat" arm showed that these #animals don't need complex maps of every leaf. Instead, they use a surprisingly simple and elegant acoustic trick to identify their next meal in total darkness.
👉 https://www.popsci.com/technology/robot-bat-hunting/
#robotics #science #biology #engineering #nature #technology #tech #innovation #discovery #research #biomimicry
A robot bat sheds new light how they hunt in darkness
‘I’m always Team Bat. They always trick me, they always outsmart me.’
#KnowledgeByte: #Echolocation is a biological sonar system used by certain animals to navigate and find prey in their environment.
Human echolocation is the ability of humans to use sound waves to perceive their surroundings.
https://knowledgezone.co.in/posts/Human-Echolocation-67322845b0ffe5bd99bd4d48
Clinical trial: Wearable
#echolocation aids using parametric sound
https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT07218991 "The objective of this study is to study a novel device designed to aid patients with impaired vision to safely navigate their environment."
Clinical trial: Wearable
#echolocation aids using parametric sound
clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT072... "The objective of this study is to study a novel device designed to aid patients with impaired vision to safely navigate their environment."
ClinicalTrials.govNeural and behavioral correlates of evidence accumulation in human click-based echolocation
Echolocation enables blind individuals to perceive and navigate their environment by emitting clicks and interpreting their returning echoes. While expert blind echolocators demonstrate remarkable spatial accuracy, the behavioral and neural mechanisms supporting the temporal integration of spatial echoacoustic cues remain less explored. Here, we investigated the temporal dynamics of spatial information accumulation in human click-based echolocation using EEG. Blind expert echolocators and novice sighted participants localized virtual spatialized echoes derived from realistic synthesized mouth clicks, with trials presenting trains of 2–11 clicks.
Behavioral results showed that blind expert echolocators significantly outperformed sighted controls in spatial localization. For these experts, localization thresholds decreased with more clicks, indicating cumulative integration of spatial cues across repeated samples. EEG decoding analyses revealed that neural representations significantly distinguished echo laterality and predicted overall spatial localization performance from the first click alone. Additionally, brain responses relative to the first click evolved systematically over successive clicks, paralleling psychophysical performance in blind echolocators and providing a possible index of perceptual information accumulation. These findings provide, to our knowledge, the first fine-grained account of temporal neural dynamics underlying click-based echolocation, directly linked to behavioral performance over multiple samples. They reveal how successive echoes are integrated over time into coherent spatial representations. Together, these results advance our understanding of the perceptual and neural mechanisms underlying echolocation and demonstrate adaptive sensory processing in the absence of vision.
### Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
E. Matilda Ziegler Foundation for the Blind, https://ror.org/00zj09521
Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute’s C.V. Starr Fellowship Fund
Foundation for Ophthalmology Research and Education International
Neural and behavioral correlates of evidence accumulation in human click-based echolocation
Echolocation enables blind individuals to perceive and navigate their environment by emitting clicks and interpreting their returning echoes. While expert blind echolocators demonstrate remarkable spatial accuracy, the behavioral and neural mechanisms supporting the temporal integration of spatial echoacoustic cues remain less explored. Here, we investigated the temporal dynamics of spatial information accumulation in human click-based echolocation using EEG. Blind expert echolocators and novice sighted participants localized virtual spatialized echoes derived from realistic synthesized mouth clicks, with trials presenting trains of 2–11 clicks.
Behavioral results showed that blind expert echolocators significantly outperformed sighted controls in spatial localization. For these experts, localization thresholds decreased with more clicks, indicating cumulative integration of spatial cues across repeated samples. EEG decoding analyses revealed that neural representations significantly distinguished echo laterality and predicted overall spatial localization performance from the first click alone. Additionally, brain responses relative to the first click evolved systematically over successive clicks, paralleling psychophysical performance in blind echolocators and providing a possible index of perceptual information accumulation. These findings provide, to our knowledge, the first fine-grained account of temporal neural dynamics underlying click-based echolocation, directly linked to behavioral performance over multiple samples. They reveal how successive echoes are integrated over time into coherent spatial representations. Together, these results advance our understanding of the perceptual and neural mechanisms underlying echolocation and demonstrate adaptive sensory processing in the absence of vision.
### Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
E. Matilda Ziegler Foundation for the Blind, https://ror.org/00zj09521
Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute’s C.V. Starr Fellowship Fund
Foundation for Ophthalmology Research and Education International
Paul Houle
Norore
K U L T ™
michael
TKSST / seethis.tv 🌈🪐✨
Knowledge Zone
The vOICe vision BCI 🧠🇪🇺
The vOICe vision BCI 🧠🇪🇺