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Mirror-Touch Synesthesia

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In the article “This Doctor Knows Exactly How You Feel,” Erika Hayasaki introduces mirror-touch synesthesia, and how patients implement this disorder in their life. Hayasaki explains what is mirror-touch synesthesia, its cause and how the patients deal with this rare medical condition in the article.
Hayasaki writes about Joel Salinas, a doctor in Harvard Neurology Residency Program, is a patient of mirror-touch synesthesia. Hayasaki further talks about Salinas’ symptoms as when he sees the person, he has the exact same feeling and physical sensation the person is feeling at the moment. Also Hayasaki describes that mirror neurons in the premotor cortex reacts when we see other’s actions and people feel a bit of the feeling at the same place of our body when people see someone getting touched. However, according to Hayasaki, mirror-touch synesthetes feel this so strong to the point that they feel like they are physically touched. This imaginary touch …show more content…
Michael Banissy of Goldsmiths, University of London and Jamie Ward of the University of Sussex have been researching on this neurological disorder, as Hayasaki introduces. Hayasaki writes in one of their researches that they have conducted, Banissy and Ward figured out that mirror-touch synesthetes have larger volume in gray matter in the regions of the brain that controls social cognition and empathy but instead they have smaller volume in regions in charge of recognising self and others separately. Another piece of information Banissy and Ward had found out is that typically mirror-touch synesthetes have experienced some kind of brain damage such as a stroke or a head trauma and after conducting series of experiments, it may have been the brain tumor that Salinas had since his childhood may be the reason for this brain to develop differently as others, Hayasaki further

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