quote:As a child, Julian Asher had a theory about the symphony concerts he attended with his parents. “I thought they turned down the lights so you could see the colors better,” he says, describing the “Fantasia”-like scenes that danced before his eyes. Asher wasn’t hallucinating. He’s a synesthete—a rare person for whom one type of sensory input (such as hearing music) evokes an addition-al one (such as seeing colors). In Asher’s ever-shifting vision, violins appear as a rich burgundy, pianos a deep royal purple and cellos “the mellow gold of liquid honey.”
quote:For most of the last century, scientists dismissed synesthesia as the product of overactive imaginations. But in recent years they’ve done an abrupt about-face, not only using modern technology to show that it’s real but also studying it for clues to the brain’s creativity. “Synesthesia is not a mere curiosity,” says retired neurologist Richard Cytowic, who helped spur the current interest. “It’s a window into an enormous expanse of the mind.”
quote:Synesthetes may have unusually dense connections between sensory regions of the brain (the most common forms of synesthesia involve adjacent brain areas)—or perhaps their brains activate connections that are usually inhibited. Similar connections must exist in most of us. How else can we explain the temporary synesthesia that people experience on hallucinogenic drugs like LSD?
i find this extremely interesting. but i wonder where they can actually go with all this. So okay, there's people out there who have richer neural connections or whatever, and their senses are more connected and allow them to maybe use parts of the brain that others may not be able to use. And the end result of this is that these people tend to be more artistic. but what next? they say that these affects are the same as the short term affects of lsd, so do they start giving everyone lsd so we can all be artistic and use more of our brain? do they develop some sort of other way to stimulate those parts of the brain in humans. And if so, how is that different from drugs? And if it is, well, what exactly is it doing? While this all seems very neat, what are the practical applications of it? How can it help us?
I think my main problem is with lack of content in the article. I would have liked to read more about what they'll be doing with all these studies and what it could mean for us. As it is, it seems like a neat article, that just briefly touches on an interesting topic.
I guess my question is, and it isn't only specific to this topic, if there are parts of the brain that the majority of us aren't using, and we could possibly lead richer/better lives if we could gain access to these parts, how do we go about that? And should we?
posted
while im not synesthetic, i have taken a couple trips. and let me tell you, i surely did have synesthetic like visions at the black sabbath concert, though, it could have been aided by the jumbo-tron display.
Posts: 879 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
The way to enhance it woudl probably to let younger children express what they see more freely. It would probably help us understand that others interpret things differently.
Posts: 4628 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Speaking of Synth, has anyone seen her recently?
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I've heard it said that it's not that a synesthete is more likely to be artistic, just that there have been quite a few famous artists (Nabokov comes to mind) who were synesthetes.
Posts: 4534 | Registered: Jan 2003
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i don't think i am a genuine synsthete, but i do seem to mix and mingle my sense, especially when i am very drousy/between consciousnesses/dreaming.
once i was falling asleep while kissing my boyfriend, and every different kind of kiss he gave me was a different icecream flavor.
once when my best friend emily was spending the night i woke up and told her i could feel the multiplicity of my face (?!) and last night in a dream i told a gorgeous gangsta rapper to rap with the flo of a man falling down a staircase in flannel pajamas.
if only i had a valid excuse. Posts: 3936 | Registered: Jul 2000
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This is interesting, if anyone talks to Synth can you ask her to come in here and talk about it. I'd love to hear from a 1st person source what it's like.
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Does it count if you assign gender to letters, numbers, and all colors (I think of blue as feminine, by the way). My husband says my dreams are fairly whacked, but then he swears he read "Heartfire" but can't remember anything that happened in it.
Okay, it's fun. But the various extraneous sensations don't seem to correspond to anything objective. One person seens blue, another pink. One person hears Bach, another Billy Idol.
So why try to amplify it? If anything, it sounds pathological.
Posts: 1041 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
Hi! I have been lurking around. Synesthesia is fascinating but difficult and a bit embarassing to describe. I mentioned recently that whatever senses I have are getting stronger and they are. Songs have colours depending on each key. They also have flavours and scents as well as each musician playing it, or at least the composer. People also have distinct scents as well, plus their character also has scents to me. So i can listen to a piece of music and sometimes tell who wrote it by scent. It's weird and has gotten weirder and I wonder if it's tied up with psychic stuff because whatever sense of people I used to have seems to have doubled this year. It's very odd, but wonderful. There's no way I'd want to be without it ebcause it makes music like a sweet drug that flows through my system and gets me high and drunk. It also allows me to get happy over the slightest smallest thing.
Edit- It's not really pathological either ,it's just... a different way of viewing the world, of percieving it, like having a third eye open you learn, for example, that two contradictory things can exist in the same place at the same time, sound becomes subtle colours and scents and it's sweet and heavenly. Except seeing pink and orange makes me feel rather sick.
posted
I think the point of studying this sort of sensory that only some are blessed with is to discover whether or not it can be of any help to us. As of now most of us are arguing that it does no real good, it simply gives the person that pocesses it a "good ride". However, how can we truly understand the potential of the thing without a complete understanding of how it works? So either with the study of this specifically or the study of other unused regions of the brain is to simply discover something that will lead us to another answer so we can contiune to find more, like connecting the dots. It's not the line from one dot to the other that's important it's the series of lines from one dot to the other that make the picture. If this sense turns out be useless hopefully it will lead us to a further knowledge of the human mind and it's capabilites. Also I think the idea of it being pathelogical is somewhat irrelevent. I mean even if the person forces it upon themselves the point is that the human mind is capable of such an action. And the idea that it is pathelogical simply becuase people come up with diffrent answers I think is flawed. The brilliance is not so much in the answers it's giving like diffrent ice creams or diffrent feelings it's more the fact that it's giving answers. And of course it's going to adapt to personality, if it didn't it wouldn't be a sense or part of who we are. Anything that comes from us must adapt to us, not anyone else. I'm very curious to see where such research will lead us, and in truth I think it could help us greatly in the end... somehow.
posted
Ah well. Whenever I read that something useful is psychologically impossible for people, I try to defy it.
I have learned to walk with my arms in step with my legs instead of alternating the swinging. I can easily flipflop those "convex/concave" figures or with some difficulty see them as flat--recently I have even learned to see the sky as convex, as though it were a gas giant hovering in the sky. But for some reason synesthesia holds no particular interest to me that way.
posted
I have an odd theory involving wildcards and how you can understand more about the larger world from observing them.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Syn, evolution seems to proceed this way, too. First someone with a different view, or different gifts, finds a better way, some success in some area which nobody else has ever been able to achieve before. Then if it's useful people take it up and benefit from it, then after the fact, natural selection works to optimize the race for that trait. So whenever any advance is made, it always starts with that lone weirdo with a slightly different slant. I find that very comforting, for some reason. We who are different are on the forefront, I realize, when I think of it like that. We are the pseudopods of the species, groping our way out to colonize the unknown.
Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
ak, that is a hyper comforting thought. Especially since I feel like such a mutant half the time and not just because of the synesthesia, but because of my whole entire world view.
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