A study conducted by scientists from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and Jagiellonian University in Poland reveals that blind individuals exhibit an ability to sense their own heartbeats. The study suggests that blindness results in an enhanced capacity to perceive internal bodily signals.
What was involved in the study?
Thirty-six blind and an equal number of sighted participants were instructed to count their own heartbeats without taking their pulse or touching their bodies.
How were the participants monitored during the study?
The researchers monitored the participants’ actual heartbeats using a pulse oximeter. By comparing the reported and recorded numbers, the researchers evaluated the participants’ ability to accurately sense their own heartbeats.
What did the results reveal?
The results revealed that blind participants outperformed their sighted counterparts in sensing their heartbeats. On a scale where a perfect score was represented by 1.0, the blind group achieved an average accuracy of 0.78, while the sighted group’s average accuracy was 0.63.
What information does this study give the researchers?
It gives the researchers important information about the brain’s plasticity and how the loss of one sense can enhance others, in this case the ability to feel what happens inside your own body.
What possible benefits could heightened heartbeat awareness offer?
The researchers suggest that heightened heartbeat awareness may offer benefits in terms of emotional processing. Previous research has established a connection between interoceptive accuracy, or the ability to discern the body’s internal state, and an individual’s aptitude for perceiving emotions in themselves and others.
Does the research team have plans for further studies?
The research team plans to further investigate how blind individuals perceive their own bodies, exploring whether structural alterations in the visual cortex, the brain area typically responsible for vision, could account for the enhanced capacity to detect internal bodily signals.
