Crossing senses

Slide 1: Synesthesia Mixed Signals

Slide 2: What is synesthesia? “synesthesia” means “together perception” Synesthesia is a neurological condition in which one sense modality is involuntarily elicited by another sense modality. In other words... people with synesthesia can hear colors, or taste shapes, or smell sounds, or so on.

Slide 3: The History of Hearing Colors • The medical world has known of synesthesia for over 300 years. • Psychologists and neuroscientists are interested in studying synesthesia because of what it might tell us about consciousness, the nature of reality, and the relationship between reason and emotion. • It is estimated that roughly 1 in of every 25,000 individuals is born with it. phonochromia hearing colors

Slide 4: Diagnosis • Involuntary - the perceptions just happen • Durable - the perception is the same every time • Memorable - often the secondary perception is remembered better than the primary perception • Emotional - the perceptions may cause emotional reactions phonotactilia hearing textures

Slide 5: What can cause synesthesia? • Synesthesia is genetic. People are born with it. • It runs in families as an x-linked dominant trait. • It is more common in women than men. • Some believe synesthesia results from the senses not fully separating during development. If this is true then all babies are synesthetes.

Slide 6: chromaphonia seeing sounds

Slide 7: What color is this word? • The most common form of synesthesia is chromagraphemia, which is the perception of colors with letters or numbers. • A synesthete will always perceive the same halo of color floating around a letter. • The synesthesia experience depends on the understood meaning of the letter, not the physical shape of it. chromagraphemia colorful letters

Slide 8: Biological Factors • There exist neural cross- connections between the senses within the brain. • The limbic system is activated during synthetic experiences involving emotions. • The perceived synesthethic sensation activates the same portions of the cerebral cortex the actual sensation would activate.

Slide 9: Two types of experience A synesthete may either be an associator or a projector. • An associator “feels” a secondary perception from a stimulus. This is the most common type. • A projector literally perceives the secondary perception from a stimulus.

Slide 10: esthesiopsia feeling sights

Slide 11: Famous people who had synesthesia • Vasily Kandinsky (painter, 1866-1944) • Olivier Messiaen (composer, 1908-1992) • Charles Baudelaire (poet, 1821-1867) • Franz Liszt (composer, 1811-1886) • Arthur Rimbaud (poet, 1854-1891) • Richard Phillips Feynman (physicist, 1918-1988)

Slide 12: phonogeusia hearing tastes

Slide 13: Treatment • There is no physical treatment available. • But, most people who have synesthesia do not want to get rid of it. • If the synesthetic pairing affects normal functioning then psychological treatment can help a person to better live with her condition. • Synesthesia is not a disease. It is not something that can be acquired at some point in life. It is actually seen by most synesthetes to be a gift.

Slide 14: Implications • It is normal to identify things like high-pitch tones as bright or a low-pitch tones as dark. • It is possible all people have synesthesia to some extent. • Studying synesthesia could shed light on the “binding mystery” of how the brain combines multiple sensations to create one reality. esthesiosmia smelling emotions

Slide 15: the end