Subtitles section Play video
-Daredevil is a really interesting character--
a hero who is blinded at a young age
by radioactive chemicals that peaked
his other senses to superhuman levels,
as well as granting him a radar sense.
The question is how much can Daredevil
"see" despite his blindness
[MUSIC]
Welcome to Comic Misconceptions.
I'm Scott.
And the Daredevil Netflix series has definitely
been drawing more attention to the Man Without Fear.
I, for one, am glad about that.
Daredevil is a great character and not just
because he definitely created the Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles, as I've talked about before,
but because his powers raise some interesting questions
about the ideas of human perception.
But first, a little background on the character.
When Daredevil debuted in "Daredevil Number 1" from 1964,
we see the accident that blinded him.
A young Matt Murdock was saving an old blind man
who was crossing the street from being
hit by a runaway truck carrying containers
of radioactive materials.
A container fell out of the truck,
and the radioactive chemicals washed into his eyes,
leaving Matt blinded.
But the story doesn't end there.
As Matt grows up, he starts to realize that his other senses
have become very sensitive.
And that allows him to perceive and navigate
the world in a different way than those who can see.
And he uses these new abilities to fight crime as Daredevil.
He can hear faint sounds, including people's heartbeats,
and to tell if they're lying.
His fingers have become so sensitive
that he can read newspapers just by feeling the impressions
of the ink on the page.
And his sense of smell and taste have also
been heightened, as well.
And if we look at real life cases, this sort of thing
is not too far off.
Radiation aside, studies have shown
that people missing one sense, like sight or hearing,
actually do compensate with their remaining senses.
Blind people, like Matt Murdock, can learn to process other
information from hearing, touch, and smell in ways that seeing
people can't.
The reason for this isn't that blind people's ears and noses
go through a physical change that allows them to hear
and smell better.
They're still working with the same hardware.
They just haven't upgraded software in their brains.
You're born with a part of your brain called
the visual cortex that is responsible for processing
all the visual information you take in.
So if you are blind, what happens to your visual cortex?
Does it just simply sit there, taking up room, not
really doing anything valuable?
Interestingly, no.
Your brain will actually rewire itself
to make use of the visual processing
center in different ways.
For example, studies have shown that blind people can recruit
their visual cortex for other processes,
like hearing, touch, and even vocabulary, which could come in
handy with Daredevil's day job as a lawyer-- needing to throw
around lots of big words.
Essentially, the brain will restructure itself to further
augment the remaining senses.
And this phenomenon is known as cross-modal neuralplasticity.
How's that for big words?
Before I go any further, I feel the need
to point out a few things.
Number one, I am far from an expert in any of this,
but I put links to where I've gotten this information
from in the description.
And number two, the research for this is still going on.
So anything I say in this video could
change as new studies are done and new information is
discovered.
But OK, back to how Daredevil can "see."
So the part of his brain used for seeing
is now being taken over to process
other sorts of information through hearing and touch.
And that's helping Matt Murdock navigate the world around him
in a different way, but still a pretty effective one.
There are a few caveats here, though.
Firstly, for this sort of thing to happen to its fullest
ability, you would need to be blinded young
while the brain is way more plastic and still able
to reorganize itself.
With Daredevil, this is definitely
the case since the accident that blinded him happened
when he was a youngster.
Another issue is that cross-modal reorganization
could cause problems if Daredevil ever
got his sight back.
If this happened, he probably wouldn't
know what to do with all that new visual information that's
coming into his brain.
He'd have to stop fighting crime and learn how to process it
all-- and relearn how to fight crime differently
than he has been doing for years,
which could be frustrating.
He would likely be worse off since his brain is so used
to his blindness.
Matt getting his sight back has happened
a few times in the comics, but usually through magic
so I guess we could just assume that magic also
rewired his brain to that of a seeing person, as well.
I don't know.
Now, interestingly, cross-modal plasticity
can also be a link to acquiring synesthesia.
Synesthesia literally means joined perception and comes
in all kinds of different flavors.
Sometimes, literally.
It's when two or more senses are perceived simultaneously,
like hearing a sound and then instantly and involuntarily
sensing a smell or taste or color
or a physical feeling that goes along with it.
Essentially, input from one sense
triggers another automatically.
For the most part, synesthesia is genetic.
And you can't acquire it if you don't already have it.
However, there is research to suggest that blind people do
start to acquire a kind of synesthesia
as their brain restructures itself
due to the loss of sight.
Some blind people say that they see flashes of light
when they listen to music, for example.
Daredevil definitely seems to be a synesthi.
This one panel in "Daredevil Number 9" from 1999
shows him playing on the piano and sensing the sounds
from the different chords as colors, smells, and tastes,
saying things like how C major smells like old boxing gloves,
E major is a coppery taste, and E minor
is the glow of neon in the dark.
Whether he was born with it or acquired
it due to his brain reorganizing itself,
or maybe even that comic book magic that
is the radioactive material he absorbed.
It is unknown.
But it's another little tidbit about the character
that I find neat.
So we've covered Daredevil's heightened senses
that allow him to "see" the world around him
in a different way and his apparent synesthesia that
allows him to "see" sounds.
But what about his most important power?
His radar sense.
The radar sense is possibly the most confusing part
about Daredevil, in my opinion.
Over the years, there have been many different interpretations
of it in the comics that range vastly.
And there has yet to be a truly standardized description
and explanation for this power.
In fact, there's a great seven part article
I'll link to you below on theothermurdockpapers.com that
chronicles the changes made to Daredevil's radar
sense over the years-- things like how it works,
what exactly is it capable of, and even different artists'
renditions of it in action.
I will give you the "Cliff's Notes" version, because it
is incredibly inconsistent.
Sometimes, it can see through walls and other solid objects.
Other times, it gets obstructed by plants and gas clouds.
Sometimes he sees extreme details,
and other times it's more like basic outlines and shapes.
Sometimes it's linked to his sense of hearing,
like a form of echolocation.
In "Daredevil Number 167," we see
it described like that of a bat.
It says, quote, "He emits probing, high frequency waves."