Losing eyesight due to accidents but this woman can still see with ears

A miracle happened to Pat Fletcher - the woman lost her sight for more than 30 years by accident.

The last thing Pat Fletcher - a 21-year-old woman - saw before the explosion was a large steel tank filled with chemicals suddenly swelled up right next to her. In a daze, she realized when the plastic hose in her hand had abnormally warmed up. For a moment, everything around her became bright, then changed to another color - the blue of the fire submerged her body.

When he woke up, Pat thought he had just had a dream. The world around her now seemed like there was no particular form, and it was very dark, as if she found herself in a thick and gloomy fog. Perhaps this is part of the effect of painkillers, because by this time her face was covered with bandages. Later a doctor with a serious face came to her bed, and told her everything. Pat, while working at a grenade factory, encountered an industrial accident when two chemicals suddenly reacted to each other and caused a big explosion.

She had lost an eyeball, the other one remained, but probably never saw the light again. According to the doctor, she was indeed extremely lucky to be alive, but would lose her eyesight, forever.

Pat used a software that converted information on the screen into audio format.

Three decades have passed, the doctor's words now are no longer true. Exactly 25 years later, Pat, now living in Buffalo, New York, is surfing the Internet using a software that converts the information on the screen into audio format. A seemingly unthinkable thing for Pat happened after she accidentally found the software, designed by a Dutch engineer.

The engineer claims that his "vOICe" software can even convert every pixel on sound images to help visually impaired people easily "see" everything around. around them . Pat had been so skeptical. She even laughed at it after listening to a sample audio version called "soundscape" that included music pieces with different tones and volume, high and low sounds coming out at the same time. This may seem silly, they are only sounds that become chaos that are emitted in a confusing way.

Then Pat "listens" a picture of a long fence running through a warehouse door through his speakers while learning. Suddenly, something surprised her. A strange thing happened in her mind, something that Pat found fundamentally different from merely listening to the sound.

"I turned around and seemed like I was really" seeing "a fence running past my eyes, letting me say," Lord, what is going on? "" Pat recalls the strange moment. period "Then I felt cold in my spine."

The unbelievable thing here is that Pat can absolutely feel that fence in front of his eyes, beyond the reach of the walking stick she still uses every day, beyond what she can reach. With only the noise emanating from the audio file, somehow miraculously Pat could imagine the shape of the fence and the gaps between the boards. The world of visually impaired people is often described as a frightening place with a feeling of imprisonment and immense bondage, because all they can feel, awareness is only stopped at the tips hand. Pat's world was the same, but now it has been expanded.

"How can sound do such a wonderful thing?" Pat wondered.

"They feel as if everything is true," she said. "The row of fences was there - you see, the entrance is right there - and then another empty space, the door must have been opened ." . "Actually, I was quite shocked. It feels like we can really walk through that door."

This software converts images into sound so that visually impaired people can "see" everything around them.

Pat went to the store and bought the smallest webcam she could find, attached it to a baseball cap and connected it to her laptop. With all of that, Pat stepped out into the hallway and began to look around.

"The feeling at the time made me extremely surprised," Pat said. "I actually saw the wall there, then I came closer and touched the plastic door. I couldn't believe it anymore. I thought I had forgotten what the world looked like."

Soon Pat could see the decorative motifs she had never noticed on the glass she had used for years. She was taken aback by the wall paintings in the dentist's clinic and could still see the leaves fluttering on the branches outside the window. She saw the faces of the people she used to meet every day, though they were still quite fuzzy.

After his amazing experiences, Pat decided to upgrade his equipment. She bought a glass with a small hidden camera placed at eye level and used it daily. Now she only uses the walking stick whenever technical problems occur with her device.

Four years later, another miracle comes to life Pat. Before this day, when he entered the room, Pat just saw everything as if looking at a 2D picture, without any depth. Once while washing the dishes, Pat suddenly looked down at the sink - always just a flat square no less - and realized when she had regained her sense of depth.

Pat bought a glass with a small hidden camera placed at eye level and used it daily.

Pat Fletcher has experienced an utopia, which is in stark contrast to what scientific theory has proven, what we have known for a long time. How can a person "look" with their ears? How does the brain of a person suddenly regain the ability to sense the depth of space that has long been lost, in the blink of an eye?

Yet the world's leading scientists have proved that Pat's experience is perfectly reasonable. A few years ago, a 58-year-old woman, with her special equipment, went to Boston to perform some tests at Harvard Medical School. Here, Pat is laid on a large table that takes her into the MRI machine, which is capable of calculating the amount of oxygen used for different parts of the human brain. Then the doctors let her listen to a "soundscapes".

Although she completely lost her sight, somehow when she listened to the "soundscapes" , the brain region connected with the ability to suddenly look back to normal. Meanwhile, when Pat only listens to very normal sounds - for example, when a researcher gently shakes his key next to her - the part of the brain associated with her hearing on the screen lights up. It seems Pat's brain distinguishes between normal sounds and "soundscapes" , which precisely activate the area of ​​the brain used for observation - even when all the sounds come into her ears. a time.

A series of follow-up experiments confirmed this. Pat Fletcher, a man who has lost his eyesight for more than 30 years, was able to see the world with his ears. Her brain has recovered its original function, in a miraculous way.