1. Hearing Colors, Tasting Shapes.
- Author
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Ramachandran, Vilayanur S. and Hubbard, Edward M.
- Subjects
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SYNESTHESIA , *SENSES , *MAGNETIC resonance imaging , *VISUAL perception , *SENSORY perception , *COLOR , *RESEARCH - Abstract
When Matthew Blakeslee shapes hamburger patties with his hands, he experiences a vivid bitter taste in his mouth. And when Jeff Coleman looks at printed black numbers, he sees them in color, each a different hue. Blakeslee and Coleman are among a handful of otherwise normal people who have synesthesia. They experience the ordinary world in extraordinary ways and seem to inhabit a mysterious no-man's-land between fantasy and reality. For them the senses--touch, taste, hearing, vision and smell--get mixed up instead of remaining separate. Modern scientists have known about synesthesia since 1880, when Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, published a paper in Nature on the phenomenon. About four years ago, in 1999, we and others began to uncover brain processes that could account for synesthesia. Along the way, we also found new clues to some of the most mysterious aspects of the human mind, such as the emergence of abstract thought, metaphor and perhaps even language. A common explanation of synesthesia is that the affected people are simply experiencing childhood memories and associations. Maybe a person had played with refrigerator magnets as a child and the number 5 was red and 6 was green. INSETS: Overview/Synesthesia;COMMON QUESTIONS;THE PUZZLE OF LANGUAGE.
- Published
- 2003
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