For this assignment please do some further online reading on the topic of synesthesia. Incorporate these new readings into those that you have read from the previous assignment into a blog report. Please synthesize the information and report on the topic as a whole and not on the separate sources of information.
Next discuss how the text covers the topic and how that integrates into the the online readings.
Let me know if you have any questions.
--Dr. M
Synesthesia means feeling together. People with Synesthesia have their senses hooked together. Some people taste shapes, hear colors, feel sounds, or relate a color with a letter or number. In Synesthesia I read about how letter and numbers can been seen as a certain color. An example would be every time a person saw the letter A in a word or by itself it would always be red. Every letter in the alphabet would be a different color. The book gave the example of a young boy who had trouble in math and his parents and teachers couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t learning the material. They then found out he had Synesthesia. He had a hard time concentrating on all the colored numbers. For him they were a distraction to learning math. I went online and also read part of the book, “The Man Who Tasted Shapes.” In this book a man was cooking dinner for a bunch of friends and one of the friends heard him say, “There aren’t enough points on the chicken.” The friend asked if he had heard him right and the man then explained his condition to the friend. When he tastes anything he feels shapes on or in his hands. Very distinct flavors he felt up his arms. Not only did he feel the shapes but the temperature of the food made a difference as well. The friend being a neurologist had heard of this condition but never met anyone with it. He told him he had a form of Synesthesia. The man had never heard of it before and was relieved to hear he was normal or at least he wasn’t the only one with this condition. When looking in my text book I didn’t find anything about Synesthesia but did find some information on sensory coding. Sensory coding is how nerve impulses represent characteristics in the environment. In other words how does our brain read an impulse that says that’s hot and painful? Synesthesia comes into play here. When the brain gets a nerve impulse the brain tells the body what it is as well as extra information such as a color or a shape. Another interesting part of Synesthesia is not all the impulses go to the same area of the brain and the person still gets multiple forms of information. Some people see colored letters or numbers and others taste shapes.
1) Synesthesia is an involuntary joining of senses. The real information of one sense is combined with the perceived sensation of another sense. The experience is very real to the person experiencing it, and is often times experienced outside of the body instead of just in the mind. Synesthesia is experienced differently by every person. Some people experience letters in colors, others experience things with specific feelings like pricks, and still others experience shapes. The combinations can be any random combination of things from the taste of blueberries when reading, or feeling a tickle in the knee when hearing a saxophone. The word or number is also perceived in the same way by the synesthete. Some of the different perceptions synesthete’s experience are: involuntary, projected, durable and generic, memorable, and emotional. Involuntary perceptions happen with no control by the synesthete. No active thought is put in by the person when the perceptions occur. Projected perceptions happen outside of the body. Instead of feeling the sensation in the mind’s eye, the person experiences the sensation outside of their body. Durable and generic perceptions are the same every time the person experiences the same stimuli. The memorable component of synesthesia is that often times the synesthete will remember the secondary sense such as the taste or color better than the primary sensation of a word or letter. For instance, a synesthete will remember a person is purple rather than the name Laura if they sense Laura in the color purple. And the emotional component of synesthesia is that it can often time produce emotions for the synesthete such as happiness or a pleasurable experience.
2) My text does not speak specifically about synesthesia. I did find some information on how the brain transfers information in neurons to give us an experience. Neurons are immersed in a solution of ions which carry an electrical charge. Some scientists believe synesthesia neurons and synapses are crossed across sensory systems creating these phenomena. Nerve impulses in the brain trigger our perceptions, and that is how we experience sensations. Synesthesia might be a result of nerve impulses working different than the average persons. Obviously, something in a synesthete’s brain is wired differently for their sensations and perceptions to be so vivid and interesting. Doing this web divergence made me think of a book I read a few years ago called I Was Born on a Blue Day. It’s author has aspergers syndrome, but also is a synesthete. He experiences numbers through colors and shapes, and describes his experiences throughout the book. He has achieved amazing things in the mathematics world because of this combination. When he sees a multiplication problem the answer easily comes to him because he recognizes the color and pattern that he sees when multiplying. I think it’s interesting to think of math in these terms instead of just numbers. Our brain may actually function more efficiently if we all thought in color/pattern terms instead of numeric terms.
Synesthesia is so interesting to me, I had a really good time with this assignment. a synesthetic person has the ability to perceive sensory information in ways we may not find to be normal. Seeing inherent colors in numbers, letters, shapes, sounds, or tasting those colors or sounds, are some of the cross sensations that are found in synethesia. while many may feel this is depictive of mental disorders such as schizophrenia, some of those who have synesthesia would argue that this is not so much a disorder of perceptual processes but more of a bonus in their lives. the reading assignment (or that of it i was able to read) focused on the more common form of synesthesia where letters numbers are percieved in color. I enjoy art, and so was determined to find some synesthetic artists and check out their work. this led me to find a few good web sites, one of which had a short 45 min film about a group of synesthetics and their lives. called "Exactly like breathing" by Andres Cota Hiriart and Alessandra Moretti
http://home.comcast.net/~sean.day/Synesthesia.htm
This was very interesting in that there are personal accounts of what there synesthesia encompasses and how it has affected their lives. one gentleman who tastes colors and words has experienced problems upon meeting certain people because he has such a strong reaction to the taste of their names. he goes on to explain that while some things have subtle tastes, others are far more salient and can cause him to make a face of disgust if there is a strong taste he can not tolerate. however he also says he rarely tells people of his condition because many people think he is just pulling their leg. While checking out the website my son asked me what the heck I was watching. I told him a bit about synesthesia, and he asked me if that was kinda like how they made the movie "Fantasia". I told him I wasn't quite sure, but it did get me to thinking about the movie a bit. The concept behind Fantasia was to create moving art that complimented the classical music, but what about some of the more surreal portions of the movie with colors splashing about and flashing across the screen? Could those be the musical interpretations of a synesthet? Maybe it was as simple as the idea for the movie coming from someone who was intrigued by the concept of being able to see music, and wondering what would it look like? In the end there really are more questions than answers. We don't really know exactly why one may develop synesthesia and another doesn't, or if if there are too many left over neurons that didn't get pruned away in early development, or if synesthesia is the future of sensation and we just haven't evolved that far yet. yup.... still interesting!
Until you brought up Synesthesia I never heard anything about it. Synesthesia is a very interesting disease that might affect 1 in 100 people, and can affect both men and women. There has been roughly 60 different types of synesthesia reported and it affects many different people in different ways. It is involuntary and automatic meaning that people are not able to control when it starts to affect them. What the disease consist of is when people will see certain numbers or letters differently than other numbers and letters. For instance if the number 4 is in their reading it might be in 3D or bright red. Another example is called visual motion, people will hear a sound in response t a visual motion or stimulus. People are able to have certain colors that are associated with different feelings in their body. For instance if someone is feeling pain they will start to see more orange colors around them, or if they are happy they might start seeing more red colors around them. Synesthesia can affect all of the senses from words making certain things taste different to people.
My book didnt talk about synthesia but the closest thing to it I found was called the binding problem. Its a question researchers have been asking themselves looking at how we can bind separated information together to create a perceptual whole. I think this is directly related to synesthesia because synesthesia is the combination of all of our senses in ways that we would have never imagined. My text refers to the binding problem saying that separated orientation columns can somehow communicate with each other. This could be one of the reasons why synaesthesia is occuring because of the different columns of information being sent. This is still a very curious disease that people are studying each day. Also people with synesthesia say that it sometimes helps them with their day to day lives remembering different things around them and what is going on. Some people report dealing with this disease as long as they can remeber while others say it has occured after tramatic experiences like a head injury. This is something that is fascinating and still has many more answers to be proven.
Synesthesia is related to a set of various cognitive states. It can be divided into two general types the first being a stimuli to a sensory input will trigger sensations in one or more other sensory modes. The second type is where certain sets of things which our individual cultures teach us to put together and categorize in some way also get some kind of sensory addition, like color. The most common form of this involves such things as colored written characters, numbers, time units, and musical notes. For example, the person may see different colors for different spoken vowels or perceive numbers as colored. This idea reminds me of the book “Born on a Blue Monday”. The author had autism and saw color for different numbers and letters. Another part to know about Synesthesia is that it is additive, meaning it adds to the primary sensory perception rather than replacing it with another. So, visual images don’t replace auditory sensations. Another part of Synesthesia is it is generally one way, meaning music induces colors but colors don’t induce sounds (although there are rare occasions where it does work both ways). Synesthesia has neurological components and is partially heritable. The percentage of the general human population with varies types of Synesthesia is estimated around 4 in 100 for the basic types and 1 in 3000 for more common forms. A few famous composers or musicians had Synesthesia. Amy Beach, an American pianist and composer, had both perfect pitch and a set of colors for musical keys. Tony Decaprio, a jazz guitarist, is able to see all twelve tones in their respective colors.
My textbook doesn’t discuss Synesthesia however, I think that at a certain age Synesthesia is developed or at least becomes present. I have this theory because a lot of people with this see musical pitches and numbers as colors; we aren’t aware or know what musical pitches or numbers are when we are born so at some age we start to actually see these certain colors. Researchers, however, are under the impression that it is genetic so we would have to be born with this and then it appears later on in life when we are presented with the certain stimuli. Possible reason for Synesthesia to me would be when our neurons are firing for a certain stimuli (like numbers) it is getting mixed around with other neurons (like colors) and the synapse is firing to a different neuron. I don’t think that is the correct way to explain the process, but somehow our brain is mixing up the signals so color is also being perceived when another stimuli is present.
Synethesia is an involuntary automatic experience of a second sensation when a different sense is stimulated. It is not a disorder, and is not mentioned in the DSM because it does not generally interfere with people’s lives and they often report that it is a pleasant experience. Synesthesia can occur with any combination of senses. The most common form is when a synesthete sees colors in response to a letter or number, but currently, at least 61 types of synesthesia have been reported by individuals. Other examples include associating colors with sounds or musical notes, personality characteristics associated with colors, words, or days of the week, tastes being associated with colors, and colors being associated with personalities. The last type is sometimes talked about as a person’s ‘aura’. It is not certain exactly what causes synesthesia, but it has been found that it is sometimes genetic or might be triggered by the use of certain drugs , or after medical complications, such as a stroke of loss of a sense, like hearing or sight. It is unsure how many people are synesthetes, because not everyone chooses to report it, but some researchers speculate that it could be as common as 1 out of every 23 people that have it to some extent, to as rare as 1 out of every 100,000 people. Also, researchers have found from the data they they have obtained that women are three times as likely as men to have synesthesia here in the United States, and for reasons unknown to them, eight times as many women as men have it in the U.K. Synesthetes also tend to left handed more frequently and usually have normal to above average intelligence. Synesthetes experience the color of the letter or number, and it is not just imagined by the individual. Sometimes these individuals have an easier time recalling their synestetic perceptions as opposed to their primary perception, and several people have reported that they have been able to remember how to spell a word or remember a name because of the colors that they are associated with to them. Also, their perceptions are consistent within themselves. If they experience a certain color with a stimuli, they will experience that same color in the future when the same stimuli is presented. Researchers and scientists are unsure exactly what exactly is different about a synesthete, but many believe that their brains are ‘cross-wired’ and that when a message is sent to your brain and intended for one system, they kind of cross paths into another system of the brain, resulting in synesthesia. These researchers also believe that when people are born, that most have these connections between the systems of the brain, based on how infants respond to sensory information, and that as we age, they just become more refined to one specific area. In the case of synesthetes, one or more of these connections are not lost.
Synesthesia is a condition in which the senses are combined in some way. A very common example of this is people seeing colored letters and numbers when they are not really colored. Many people also see musical notes or taste sound. Most of the synesthesia stories I've read are ones where color associations are present. Besides coding letters and numbers in color, things like sound and tastes can also be associated with colors.
Synesthesia is involuntary and most synesthetes describe their associations as great experiences. Most synesthetes report having the condition for as long as they can remember. They also speak fondly of their synesthesia. Synesthesia is thought to be passed on genetically although it is not certain of how.
There is a theory that all of us are born synesthetes but lose our cross sensory associations as we get older. This is not a universal idea. As far as I could tell, there are only theories on how synesthesia occurs. It has been seen that synesthetes’ neural connections and activity differ from people without synesthesia.
Most synesthetes have a hard time telling people about their experiences because others don't understand and some don't believe the experiences are real. One girl ran away because her parents tried to keep her isolated from others. Some others report doctors passing it off as an over-active imagination or even a mental condition. In one story, a child had trouble in math at school because of the color associations they made with the numbers. It was frustrating for the child to see certain colors next to each other and, therefore, had difficulty seeing certain numbers next to each other. Others have used synesthesia to their advantage in school work. Some have used their color associations to organize information in their minds and even keep track of specific dates. A few say that for a while they thought everyone did math in color. Some child synesthetes do not realize that everyone does not make the same sensory associations as they do.
Synesthesia is very interesting to me. I can understand making color associations with letters although I do not believe that I am a synesthete. I have made these associations on more than one occasion but I pass this off as my creativity since this does not readily happen and is voluntary. The sensory association that perplexed me the most is the taste/color association. I cannot imagine this. One man with this association eats chicken and ice cream together because he enjoys the color combination.
Synesthesia is still being researched. It is also still being brought to the attention of non-synesthetes. I did not know about synesthesia until reading about it in this class. I hope that synesthesia becomes a more known condition and it continues to get easier for synesthetes to tell others about their sensory pairing.
I found the topic of synthesia to be really interesting to me. Synthesia is a condition where one sensation is associated with another that don't typically get paired together. Sensations are paired together or trigger other sensations. For example, some people with this condition will see colors when they hear certain sounds or may taste something when they are actually just touching the object. Although, synesthesia is not a commonly talked about condition, there are more people than many think that have synesthesia. A lot of people with this contdition notice that what they are experiencing is not normal compared to many, but are not believed or are treated for something not even relavent, such as schitzophrenia. Because of this, many with the condition often hide the fact that they are experiencing sensations differently than most others.
Synesthesia has been compared to to other conditions such as referred pain and the phantom limb, where people who have had a limb amputated still feel as though they have that limb and can feel sensations of the phantom limb. Women and left-handed people are the most likely to form the condition and it can be passed on to others genetically.
My book doesn't go into much detail about synesthesia but it does discuss a little how the brain is involved. By doing studies with patients and using PET they were able to determine that people with color -word synesthesia only experienced visual sensations when words were presented and not just tones themselves. The PET showed that people with color-word synesthesias show their brains having an interaction between language and vision areas.
It's hard for me to truely comprehend what synesthesia is actually like, because the condition is something that is not heard of often and does not make a whole lot of sense when you have never experienced it before.
Synesthesia is a Greek word, Syn (together) and aisthesis (perception) literally mean joint perception. This is often just the case, however, it is hard to determine the exact type of synesthesia due to the complex nature of the disease. Some people experience it totally different from others. For instance, some may smell in response to touch, others may see colors from seeings certain letters or words. Synesthesia can be a combination of any different sense joining together. Synesthetes, as their called, do no voluntarily percieve things this way, it is thought to be a malfunction in the way the brain is wired. It is proposed that neurons and synapses are cross wired to the wrong area's of the brain, thus leading to the experience of synesthesia. Area's that could be affected range from the limbic system to the cerebral cortex.
On one website i was checking out I found an interesting bit on who are usually more affected with Synesthesia. The list looks like this;
Women in the U.S. have a three times higher diagnosis rate than men. Also, women in the U.K. have an eight times higher diagnosis rate than men.
(Maybe men think less of their symptoms as they tend to be more apathetic to their general well being, if it's not bleeding...its fine.)
Synethetes are more likely to be left-handed.
(Maybe the left-handed trait is a wiring malfunction as well?)
Synethetes are of normal or above average intelligence.
Synethetes are often found in the same family, it is believe to be on the X(female) chromosome.
Synesthesia is an interesting disease and would be intriguing to experience for a short time, hearing your favorite song and tasting ice cream could be quite pleasurable. However, it can cause stress and possible interference in every day life.
1. Synesthesia is basically defined as a condition in which a stimulus in one sense modality is involuntarily elicited in another sense modality which is basically what the disorder is. The word Synesthesia can be broken down as a result of its meaning. The Syn- in fact comes from a Greek word which means together and Aesthesis which means perception come together. In looking at this disorder, is so complex it’s very difficult to decipher what Synesthesia really is. The Synesthesia experience takes place outside of the body instead of just in the brain. People experience it in a broad range which is all different from one another. An Example of this would be that some people may smell something in response to touch or others may use vision in response to hearing. Other examples of synesthetic experiences people can have, just to name a few, are being able to see sounds—as well as hear them; seeing or "knowing" the colors, sexes, and personalities of letters, numbers, and other symbols; feeling weight and shape on their bodies by just tasting something; and smelling colors. A small proportion of the population have developmental synesthesia. These people routinely experience one or more forms of synesthetic perception and/or synesthetic conception, beginning in early childhood. Synesthetes usually don’t voluntarily act accordingly. Some researchers have a strong research and a belief that it is some sort of impairment in the brain that causes circuiting to get thrown off. This can happen if neurons and synapses get crossed up in different parts of the brain. Your Cerebral Cortex and your Limbic System are systems that can be affected as a result of Synesthesia. Many people who actually have Synesthesia sometime hide it because they don’t want to report that they may be experiencing different kinds of sensations estrange from other people. I found some interesting information about Synesthesia. Synesthetes often describe their concurrents with meticulous care and attempt to convey specific hues by combining color
terms in phrases like ‘bluish gray’ and ‘orangish black’2,29. One study compared the consistency with which synesthetes and non-synesthetes assigned color names to 117 letters and words30. After one week, non-synesthetes named the same color for only 38% of the items. With impressively greater consistency, and after a longer time interval, synesthetes named the same color for 92% of the items one year later.
2) I didn’t find anything in the text that specifically talked about synesthesia but there was some information that leads to perhaps a neurologic basis as to how synesthesia occurs. Dedicated regions of the brain are specialized for given functions. Increased cross-talk between regions specialized for different functions may account for the many types of synesthesia. For example, the additive experience of seeing color when looking at graphemes might be due to cross-activation of the grapheme-recognition area and the color area called V4. One line of thinking is that a failure to prune synapses that are normally formed in great excess during the first few years of life may cause such cross-activation.
Synesthesia is a condition in which one sense is perceived by one or more additional senses. For example, when someone with Synesthesia hears or reads on name a certain smell or flavor may come with that name. Synesthesia comes from two Greek words, Syn- meaning together, and aisthesis- meaning perception, basically meaning joined perception. Synesthesia is different for everybody who experiences it. The most common form is colored letters and numbers. Synesthesia has been described as mixed signals in the brain, or crossed wires, they are not sure exactly what causes this for sure. Synesthesia is a connection between the phenomenal and relational senses. These people experience two separate senses when the rest of us just experience one. When they see color they hear a sound. For example, people hearing the A sound see red and clue. People with this condition also describe the clouds in the sky to sound like, “putt, putt, putt.” Also, they “taste” what they feel and they can “feel” what they taste. For example, mint felt like smooth, cool columns of glass. This is a condition that only happens to about ten in a million people.
Synesthesia is the joining of real information accompanied by a perception in another sense. This sense is involuntary; this is seen as real, often outside the body, instead of imagined in the mind's eye. Some guidelines for diagnosing synesthetic perceptions are:
Involuntary: synesthetes do not actively think about their perceptions; they just happen.
Projected: rather than experiencing something in the "mind's eye," as might happen when you are asked to imagine a color, a synesthete often actually sees a color projected outside of the body.
Here is a video called "Exactly Like Breathing":
http://vimeo.com/7064098
Durable and generic: the perception must be the same every time. You may see colors or lines or shapes in response to a certain smell, but you would not see something complex such as a room with people and furniture and pictures on the wall.
Memorable: often, the secondary synesthetic perception is remembered better than the primary perception.
Emotional: the perceptions may cause emotional reactions such as pleasurable feelings.
According to the University of Washington, the number of people with synesthesia range from 1 in 200 to 1 in 100,000. There are probably many people who have the condition but do not realize what it is.
Synesthetes tend to be in women, left-handed, neurologically normal and hereditary.
Synesthesia is a very interesting condition in which stimulation in one of the body's senses results in simultaneous stimulation of another, unrelated sense. For example, a when a synesthete bites into an apple, he or she may see a vivid shade of purple; or when he hears a saxophone wailing on the radio, he might see a smokey haze of green dancing to the music. This is known as Synesthesia Proper. In a more common form known as category or Cognitive Synesthesia, items our culture teaches us to categorize (such as numbers and letters) receive additional sensory input, such as smell, color, and/or flavor. Interestingly, each synesthete has a different perception of what color corresponds with each letter (or sound, or taste...) and therefore a dark-red "S" seen by one synesthete may be seen as sky-blue by another. Although the letters may appear in color, a synesthete knows that the true color of the "A" that begins this sentence is black, however, to him or her, that letter will appear as both black and goldish-yellow at the same time.
Synesthesia is appears to have a neurological link in causation and may be heritable. Some evidence suggests that synesthesia may be learned in childhood while other evidence indicates no link to learned associations. The percentage of the population affected by this condition ranges greatly; from as common as 1 in 500 for some basic types of cognitive synesthesia, to 1 in 25,000, and possibly even one out of every couple million people experience some forms of rarest forms of synesthesia proper. Synesthesia tends to affect women more than men, and has been occurring worldwide for the last several hundred years.
If a person wishes to experience the connection of senses in the way a synesthete does, they might try taking drugs such as LSD or the psychoactive brew, Ayahuasca. Individuals under the influence of these drugs have reporting similar sensations (as well as others...) as those affected by Synesthesia.
Although Synesthesia may appear to some as a cognitive deficit, almost any synesthete would tell you that they are not impaired by what they experience, and many say they would not want to experience the world in the way "normal" people do. In this respect, Synesthesia should be considered a phenomenon and not a disease.
http://www.medicalsite.com/synesthesia-facts.htm
http://courses.missouristate.edu/tomtomasi/tom/BIO%20361/Physiology%20articles/sensory%20pathology.htm
http://msp.sfsu.edu/Instructors/rey/synesth.html
I began my search for Synesthesia Divergence by looking for stories of those with this condition. There was a great article at CBS news (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/08/60II/main323596.shtml) talking about the way that this condition has manifested for different people and how they have experienced their lives with it.
One interesting synethestetic, Carol Crane, feels music on her body, and enjoys the sensation, but she feels physically exhausted after a concert.
In another case, Carol Steen sees colors with music, and then translates this into artwork. She has become a well known artist in New York City. After reading about her, I looked for more information about synesthesia and art, and found a lot of helpful and interesting material on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia_in_art For example, did you know that the movie Fantasia is the closest movie to ever recreate a synethestetic experience through film – though whether it intended to or not is still unknown. And another synethestetic, Marcia Smilack, uses her synesthesia moments as an internal communication guide to tell her when it is time to take a photo. Her pictures are pretty cool and one of the images is on the Wiki link.
The Goldstein text mentions synesthesia in a reference section for further reading in the chapter on auditory processing. The description is brief, but the text does explain that this is a form of cross-modal processing, and gives an example of seeing light in response to sound. This support the stories that I have talked about here, but as mentioned by other posters, there are many different forms of this condition - such as tasting words!
I began searching for information on Synethesia by looking up the defintion because I was unsure of what it even meant. A website I found defines it as a general name for a related set (a "complex") of various cognitive states. (http://home.comcast.net/~sean.day/html/definition.html
Synesthesia may be divided into two general, somewhat overlapping types. The first, which I sometimes call "synesthesia proper", in which stimuli to a sensory input will also trigger sensations in one or more other sensory modes. The second form of synesthesia, called "cognitive" or "category synesthesia", involves certain sets of things which our individual cultures teach us to put together and categorize in some specific way – like letters, numbers, or people's names – also get some kind of sensory addition, such as a smell, color or flavor. The most common forms of cognitive synesthesia involve such things as colored written letter characters numbers, time units, and musical notes or keys.
There were some facts that I found interesting about Synthesia and who is likely to have it. For example, people with this are more likely to be women, more likely to be left handed and in the same family. I remember reading on this website that Synthesia is sometimes known as the cause of "cross-wiring" in the brain.In other words, neurons and synapses that are "supposed" to be contained within one sensory system cross to another sensory system.
I could not find very much information in my textbook about Synthesia. It describes this as cross wiring of the brain also.It discusses that many researchers are interested in synesthesia because it may reveal something about human consciousness. The text mentions that one of the biggest mysteries in the study of consciousness is what is called the "binding problem." No one knows how we bind all of our perceptions together into one complete whole. For example, when you hold a flower, you see the colors, you see its shape, you smell its scent, and you feel its texture. Your brain manages to bind all of these perceptions together into one concept of a flower. Synesthetes might have additional perceptions that add to their concept of a flower. Researchers believe that studying these perceptions may someday help us understand how we perceive our world.
Synesthesia is a situation in which stimulation of one modality causes an involuntary and simultaneous perceptual experience in another modality. This is a rare, not well known phenomenon that occurs in less than one percent of healthy people and has also been reported in patients with eye disease, brain damage, tumors, epilepsy, autism and migraines. Although the mechanism responsible for these experiences is not known, it appears to be caused by excitation of brain areas of two senses or modalities. Research has found that is a biological phenomenon, is more common among women than men with a 3 to 1 ratio, and it seems to be heritable.
As we can see there is still not a clear understanding on this cross-modality experience, mainly because of the challenges many synesthetes have had to face. In the 1900’s, studies on cognitive processes were generally found to be worthless and if research was conducted, the findings would support the popular movement at the time which was behaviorism. Synesthesia has only recently been recognized by the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association therefore gaining legitimate status among scientists. Before this, many synesthetes kept it a secret because they feared ridicule or to be misdiagnosed to have a mental illness such as schizophrenic. The unique and individual nature of these experiences and its large amount of variations also make synesthesia difficult to study.
For synesthetes, a cross-modality experience can be induced by letters, digits, tones, units and personalities among others. The strongest and associations have been reported between vowel sounds and colors which are called graphemes. There are also certain colors that are more common than others. Research has also shown that this involuntary perception is not limited to direct external stimuli, for example when a synesthete is presented with a math problem, the color associated with the numerical answer was perceived.
There are two important findings that support the validity of synesthesia. One of them is its consistency across time. When synesthetes were asked to describe the color that each of 100 words triggered as when done a year earlier, researchers found that over 90% of the time the associations between words and colors were consistent with the previous response. The second finding is that synesthesia can be measured in the brain. Using positron-emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers have found that for synesthetes who report colored hearing, visual areas of the brain show increased activation in response to sound. Moreover, when words were presented to individuals who report color-word synesthesia brain activation occurred in the language area and in a number of higher-order visual areas. With these findings it is also possible to conclude that cross-modality experiences are generated by an interaction between brain areas.
Although research on synesthesia is growing, the causes underlying this phenomenon are still unknown. Because of this, many theories have been proposed since research re-emerged in the 1970’s but not all have received widespread support such as the one proposed by neurologist Richard E. Cytowic. He claims that the cause of synesthesia rests in the limbic system which is a primitive part of the brain in charge of higher order thinking. Another theory proposed by Baron-Cohen, explains that the brain architecture of synesthetes is different than non-synesthetes in terms of the amount of connection between neurons. Since different sensory functions are assigned to separate modules in the brain that have limited communication between them, he believes synesthetes’ brains have more connections causing stimulation to be perceived by more than one modality. Peter Grossenbacher, psychologist at Naropa University, proposes that the connections that carry information from high-level multisensory areas of the brain back to single-sense areas are not properly inhibited in the brains of synesthetes, so when that inhibition becomes disrupted senses also are producing a sythestetic experience.
As we can see further research is still needed for a better clarity on the specific causes of synesthesia. Nonetheless, research shouldn’t be limited to the causes instead it should also help us understand the nature of sensation and perception, the interaction between them, and their relationship with our cognitive processes.
Synesthesia is a remarkable advancement in the brain were the information is crossed in two different potions of the brain that recognizes numbers and the shapes and textures which can make a person hear a sound or a color. The most famous savant is Kim Peek who has autism, his ability to remember events, date, history and the connections that each date has is extraordinary. Synesthesia usually see color that are connected to numbers. Can this complicate idea be a factor in which we as normal people learn from, to advance in science as well as in technology, the brain is the subject of the new frontier based on all the concepts that we and science does not know. I remember in Cognitive psychology class that he brain has different singles as well as a verity of different sound that scientist are trying to copy in hope of making a super computer.the concept of it is fascinating but it really going to happen if people feel that it crosses the line of playing god. is a heredity or know more in the savant autism which is a connection between genius in the case of Kim Peek. If the brain is using or transferring information to both sides of the brain can and then get crossed in making memory or the task of memory in terms to STM or LTM due to rehearsal easier to become scheme. if you can feel emotion through seeing i sit really possible.
Synesthesia is a new term for me and I didn't know it existed until I took this class. Synesthesia comes from a greek word meaning together. It is a condition in which one sense is simultaneously perceived as if by one or more additional senses such as sight. Another form of synesthesia joins objects such as letters, shapes, numbers, or people's names with a sensory perception such as smell, color, or flavor. Synthetic perceptions are different to each person. Different people with synesthesia almost always disagree on their perceptions. An example might be that they see an object as two different colors. According to Richard Cytowic perceptions are: involuntary, projected, durable and generic, memorable, and emotional. Estimates for the number of people that have synesthesia range from 1 in 200 to 1 in 100,000. There are probably a lot of people that have this condition, but do not know it. Synesthesia is common in: Women, people who are left-handed, neurologically normal, and runs in the family which means that it is genetic. My text states that Synesthesia is stimulation of one modality that leads to perceptual experience in another. This phenomenon is rare, occuring in less than one percent of people, but has been been described in hundreds of published reports since the 18th century. In some cases, people see a colored light in response to a sound stimulus
Synesthesia is percieved to be a sensation and is derived from the Ancient Greek word meaning "together". Synesthasia is a neurologically-based condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.Synesthesia is when two or more senses cooperate in perception. Once dismissed as imagination or delusion, metaphor or drug-induced hallucination, the experience of synesthesia has now been documented by scans of synesthetes' brains that show "crosstalk" between areas of the brain that do not normally communicate. Synesthesia is when you virtually can hear the objects you're tasting, see the objects you're hearing, etc. Experts say that there is more than twenty different types of Synesthasia. Synesthasia affects about one percent of the population. Synesthesia apparently has neurological aspects in regard to its causation, and it seems to be heritable, with one component (possibly a "trigger factor") perhaps passed down genetically as autosomal dominant. All forms of Synesthesia seem to be idiosyncratic. No two people's sets of synesthetic associations are the same. Synesthesia is still widely unknown. It's recognized by the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Synesthesia Association however; to the general population this impairment is not familiar. However; I am very glad that I got to research this topic because I find this very interesting and am eager to learn further information regarding this impairment. I found a fascinating youtube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvwTSEwVBfc) that goes into great detail about the phenomenon of the synesthasia impairment. It does a really good job of explaining this phenomenon and it interviews individuals who suffer from this impairment. As I was looking through my textbook I was very disappointed that E. Bruce Goldstein didn't go into more detail about this impairment, because I find Synesthasia fascinating and would like to have read another individuals perspective on this impairment.
1) Synesthesia a neurological disorder that occurs when one neurological pathway is activated and causes a secondary pathway to automatically and involuntary have experiences. Example given was that when light is experienced during the processing of sound. Although most people associate sounds to colors, people suffering from this disorder do not have a choice to do so; it just happens. Another aspect of synesthesia is that the second perception is experienced as real and usually occurs outside of the body. In some cases this disorder starts during childhood and progresses into adulthood. A few examples of cases, people have seen colors when reading text or hearing the words aloud. Another interesting side effect is sometimes people with this disorder see colors when perceiving pain. The example given was when the subject was getting acupressure they see colors in layers like the color orange or yellow.
http://web.mit.edu/synesthesia/www/perspectives.html
Synaesthesia was first documented in the late 1800’s by Francis Galton. The word comes from the Greek words for ’together’ and ’sensations’ and refers to the phenomena of one sensation being accompanied by one or more other sensations. For example, you may hear sounds, but also see particular colors associated with different sounds, or taste a particular flavor whenever you hear a particular note or piece of music.
Modern neuroscience has uncovered a great deal about what is going on in people with synaesthesia, called synaesthetes. When you first hear about synaesthesia (or taste it if you’re a synaesthete) it sounds like some kind of freaky unbelievable magic trick. However, controlled experiments began to show that far from being a totally bizarre mental disorder it was a law governed and highly sophisticated method of sensory perception. V.S. Ramachandran used a number of basic facts about synaesthesia to formulate his overall conclusion about what is going on in a synaesthetes brain.
First, synaesthesia tends to run in families, so it has a genetic component. Second, artists, musicians, and other creative types are 8 times more likely to have synaesthesia than other populations. Third, no two synaesthetes have the same exact secondary sensations (5 produces the color red in one person but the color indigo in another, etc. etc.) but individual synaesthetes always experience the same secondary sensation.
Ramachandran had already done pioneering work on phantom limb pain, including the development of the various ‘neural maps’. In phantom limb patients areas of the brain which experience sensations on parts of the body that surround the areas of the brain which previously produced sensations in the phantom move in on that territory such that the phantom limb sensations are felt on these areas of the body.
He explains that as infants all areas of our brain are connected to all other parts, and that as we develop and learn our brains slowly trim down these connections. The brain doesn’t loose the ability to form new connections later however, for it is this plasticity at work in the phantom limb patients. Ramachandran suggests that with synaesthetes a particular gene is malformed and thus this trimming down and shrinking of neuronal connections (called apoptosis) does not happen in synaesthetes. The most common form of synaesthesia, that of experiencing colors and numbers is explained well within this hypothesis because these parts of the brain are very close to one another.
Another hypothesis is that it isn’t that the connections are trimmed away in non-synaesthetes but only that they are inhibited. Support for this view includes the example of taking LSD, wherein this drug can trigger different forms of synaesthesia. Since this happens almost immediately the connections must already be there, just lying dormant or inhibited. With drugs however the synaesthesia is much more sensory, visual and auditory, rather than being more ‘cognitive’ as it is with actual synaesthetes. Basically drug induced synaesthesia is a cheap knock-off.
What was most interesting to me in all the video’s and websites I went to are the various ways in which we are all ‘synaesthetes’. Ramachandran shows to shapes one curvy and flowing much like a bizarre flower, and the other a jagged and crooked star. He explains that they are letters for an alien language, which is ‘bobo’ and which is ‘kiki‘? Most people see the jagged star as ‘kiki’ and the round flower like shape as ‘bobo‘. Similarly most people would say that high pitched sounds are bright and small, whereas low pitched tones are large and dark. These examples help you to conceptualize what synaesthesia might be like and without examples like these the whole thing just seems almost to hard to believe.
The text says very little about synaesthesia directly. However, all the building blocks for explaining it are there. Synaesthesia is defined at the end of the section on hearing and auditory sound. The text talks a lot about neural plasticity and how it relates to the various senses. If we can assume that this is what’s happening in synaesthetes, that they have increased connectivity between and amongst various senses then the text explains how this happens and what it would be like to have this.
The general idea would be that rather than being fixed, neurons and neuronal connections are plastic and can be shaped by genetics, learning, and the environment. Much like Gauthier (1999) training participants to recognize Greebles, synaesthetes can recognize various other sensory experiences that non-synaesthetes would not experience. Naturally this example is a bit of a stretch since both experience the Greeble (but simply do not recognize it as such) but both do not experience the secondary sensory experience. Synaesthesia might be defined as ’plasticity run amuck.’
Sources
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind.html
http://www.logarithmic.net/pfh/synaesthesia using synaesthesis in business
http://home.comcast.net/~sean.day/index.html great video, like 50 minutes long