... Synesthesia Most of us are pretty familiar with world renowned health conditions and diseases mainly because of the number of people affected by them. But what about the ones that are not that common. One of them is a condition called Synesthesia. It is a phenomenon that has been known for about 200 years. Synesthesia has helped scientists learn more about brain functions and has opened a new pathway of creativity. Have you ever wondered what the color blue smells like? Or what the letter A taste like? Well people who have Synesthesia might be able to answer this. Now if we break the word apart we have "syn" which means together and "aesthesis" which means sensation. Synesthesia is a condition in which a person's senses are merged into each other. People who have this condition are called Synesthetes and therefore tastes shapes, hear colors and feel sounds. They also "experience colors from reading letters and numbers" (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0964704X.2010.528240#.U0iAQvldUue) and might taste the words they read as well. Synesthetes all experience it differently so they do not all see, hear, smell and touch the same way. This condition is very rare but scientists have been studying it for decades. George Sachs wrote a latin medical dissertation in 1812 in which he first introduced the phenomenon. Later on in 1848, Charles-Auguste-Édouard Cornaz wrote a thesis in which he also mentioned Synesthesia. These publications resulted...
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...of green cresting and crashing above a deep blue ocean of melodies. Synesthesia is a neurological condition or gift that affects 2-4% of the general population (PLoS Biology 2011). It presents itself in many different forms, some more common than others. Although synesthesia is not a new discovery, there are still many mysteries as to where the gene is located, how it is inherited, and why the gene has been conserved throughout time. A battery of tests are available to help diagnose synesthesia but do not check for all types. The effects...
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...The first thing that I found to be interesting was that synesthesia is a condition that involves all of the senses. Prior to reading this article, I thought that it was a condition that only involved seeing colors from sounds because I met a person who was a synesthete and claimed to see colors from sounds. Another thing that I found interesting was the large gap between the year in which synesthesia was discovered and the year that it began to be seriously studied. Scientists have known about the condition since 1880, yet clear answers were not found until 1999. Ever since I first heard about synesthesia, it was such a fascinating concept to me that I found it bizarre that the notion of it would just be disregarded and not further researched...
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...Synesthesia is a condition that causes different senses to blend with each other. Nearly 4 percent of the population experience synesthesia. Whenever someone with synesthesia receives stimulation from one of their senses it causes an involuntary experience in a second sense. A synesthete, or person who has synesthesia, might see sounds or taste words. If they smell cinnamon, it might cause them to also feel as if something is brushing up against their leg. There are many different types of synesthesia, but some are more common than others. Grapheme-color synesthesia is one of the most common types. People who experience this type of synesthesia associate a certain color with a specific letter or number. Sound-to-color synesthesia is when a...
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...Synesthesia is the broad category for a variety of involuntary associations that can develop between senses. When one stimulus is experienced in one sensory mode, it can trigger another type of sensation. This process appears to be automatic. Such associations generally remain stable over time. People with synesthesia, called synesthetes, vary significantly, since there sensations tend to be rather individualized. Synesthesia was first reported in 1812, but was more widely recognized in the late twentieth century. It has a genetic piece, as it runs in families. Synesthesia can be developmental, as there has been some research to suggest that there is an environmental component. It can also occur later in life, as the result of some form of...
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...Does the use of multi-sensory devices in the arts create a better experience for the viewer? Sarah Rachel Kemp Manchester Metropolitan University, Fine Art - Printmaking “Synaesthetes may be more likely to participate in creative activities (Rich, Bradshaw & Mattingley 2005), and some studies have suggested a correlation between synaesthesia and creativity (Domino 1989; Dailey, Martindale & Borkum 1997).”[i] After reading an extract on sense experience from the text Phenomenology of Perception by Maurice Merleau Ponty, I decided to find out more about the condition of synaesthesia. I discovered the quote above and became intrigued by the idea that creativity could be linked to a specific genetically predisposed condition in the brain, as I had always believed that while some people are just naturally gifted when it comes to creativity, that to think in a creative way could be learned and developed through practice. If the experience of perceiving more than one sense at the same time is simply a natural part of the way we experience the world, then maybe multi-sensory art can be better appreciated by more people than an art piece that involves the use of only one of our senses to experience it? I decided to research further into the condition of synaesthesia in order to help me determine if the use of multi-sensory techniques and devices in the arts creates a better experience for the viewer. What is Synaesthesia? Synaesthesia is probably best described...
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...Title: Synaesthesia – a convincing example of a genuine effect in psychology. Synaesthesia is a condition in which stimulation of one modularity leads to unusual activation of different modularity. According to Simner (2007) the most common synaesthesias (ca. 88%) are induced by linguistically related stimuli such as words, graphemes (letters and numerals) and phonemes which trigger visual, gustatory or olfactory experience (e.g. colour, shape, taste, smell). For synaesthetes, in everyday life, reading a newspaper or listening to CD might result in seeing colours or experiencing tastes. For example (Simner, 2007), when ES hears a major sixth tone interval he tastes low-fat cream. Similarly, on hearing F-sharp he sees the colour purple. Such experience is sometimes described as a “merging of senses”. After Galton (1880) carried out his first studies on synaesthesia in the late 19th century not many scientists were investigating the phenomenon treating it instead as a curiosity. Recently, in the light of contemporary cognitive and neuroscience studies the topic of synaesthesia regained interest. Since initially, evidence indicating that synaesthesia is a real and concrete sensory phenomenon was scarce and based mainly on the anecdotal reports, scientists were interested in testing its genuineness. According to Ramachandran and Hubbard (2001) some accounts of the condition stated that it is solely product of imagination or that such experiences are nothing more than childhood...
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...Stephanie B Wassily Kandinsky's painting Improvisation 21A Wassily Kandinsky’s painting Improvisation 21A has many different aspects that create a beautiful piece of artwork. While viewing his work I noticed many different aspects of harmony and variety within this photo. Kandinsky utilized harmony in three different ways. Within the bottom left corner of the photo the artist utilizes repetition with the creation of various lines that seem like little mountains. It creates sections but are all similar within that area of the art piece. The color pattern is stable throughout the artwork, focusing on the different lighter hues of color. The contour lines within this photo are all represented with semi thick dark lines that break up the photos different areas but also bring unity within this piece. When Kandinsky utilized variety within this photo, three different aspects stood out to me. The contrast of color within the top right corner compared to the rest of the painting shows the different variety of cool colors opposed to warm colors throughout the left and bottom sides of the artwork. Within the top right portion of the photo there is one single red dot amongst all the darker colors within that area. It seems that the artist utilized only natural colors within the top right hand corner of the photo. As the rest of the photo incorporates other colors this particular area is left untouched. With the combination of variety and harmony within this...
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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...
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...What is synesthesia? Synesthesia, also spelled synaesthesia, is a mingling of the senses that can cause you to taste words, see sounds, attribute colors and/or personalities to numbers etc., or see days of the week in a spatial position around you. And those are just some of the types of synesthesia that synesthetes experience. There are approximately 63-100 types of synesthesia, with nine major categories. The most common type of synesthesia is associating colors to numbers, letters, words, or symbols. This type of synesthesia is also known as grapheme-color synesthesia. Grapheme-color synesthetes have trouble reading color texts, because the colors most often coincide with their own internal colors. And each grapheme-color synesthete had a different color for...
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...Synesthesia means sensation and together. This happens when you stimulate one sense and it automatically and uncontrolled makes a different sense to react on that stimulation too. For very few people, smells are stated to activate coexisting visual occurrence. There are two ways smell can be sensed, at the nose, orthonasally, and through the back of the throat as a part of flavor, retronasally. Typically, people do not take into account that smell is a part of flavor perception (Rozin, 1982: as cited in: Russell, Stevenson, & Rich, 2015), which makes it easier to examine what role the type of inducer has on the sensation. Older research has argued that synesthesia used little brain energy, but newer research has argued that it is much more...
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...a | Synesthesia | | | Name | 3/10/2012 | | Abstract Intermingling of different modalities simultaneously making the person feel different senses at a time is what synesthesia is. In the late 19th and 20th century, synesthesia has become a hot topic for research in psychological field. The research process is undergoing renaissance. About 100 years ago, people were unable to understand the cause behind these synesthetic conditions. With the advancement in science and neural technology, the interest in the research of this area has gain momentum. The major problem in synesthetes is that they generally do not expose their feelings in front of everyone due to some kind of inferiority complex. While some person feel this as a gift. Some major hypothesis has been found out which aims to explain the whole fundamentals of synesthesia. Some of them are NS Hypothesis and CMT Hypothesis. However, synesthesia is just a condition and it should not be confused as a disease, disorder or a syndrome. A synesthete can easily sustain his life like a normal people do. Contents 1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………………03 2. Experiences………………………………………………………………………………04 3. Primary Researches………………………………………………………………………04 4. Nature of Synesthesia……………………………………………………………………05 5. Modern Research and Findings………………………………………………………….05 6. Synesthesia and the Art of Comparison…………………………………………………06 7. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….07 ...
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...Internship with the Developmentally Disabled Zachary Lumpkin Liberty University Abstract The object of this paper is to give the reader an idea of what it is like to work for an agency that houses, educates and reintegrates developmentally disabled and mentally retarded adults. The research and development of the paper was done over the course of a fourteen-week internship by a student seeking a Bachelor of Science in Psychology. It will delve in depth into the behaviors that the intern observed during his internship. It will connect those behaviors to theory. It will explain and educate as to the benefits of doing such work under the supervision and tutelage of trained experts. It will also recommend to anyone interested in getting into the field ways to be successful and get the most out of the time they spend and lastly it will chronicle the personal growth that the author experienced during his internship. As stated in the abstract, the internship chronicled in this paper was done over a 14-week period at an agency that houses and educates developmentally disabled and mentally retarded adults with psychological disorders. Though most of the information in this paper was gathered over the 14-week period previously mentioned, the author has been employed with the agency for close to three years and has gathered even more information during this three-year tenure with the agency. The agency has in the neighborhood of sixty-five clients and has been open for over forty...
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...The brain is a beautiful, mysterious, and vital key to the human body. Most people don’t even give the brain a second thought. Though, there are people in this world who see it in extra detail. Those with synesthesia, like the scarce amount of people who have Ordinal Linguistic Personification, see the world in high definition. “Synesthesia is a perceptual experience in which stimuli presented through one modality will spontaneously evoke sensations in an unrelated modality. The condition occurs from increased communication between sensory regions and is involuntary, automatic, and stable over time.” (Brang 2011) My research shows how people with Ordinal Linguistic Personification struggle in math, grow up thinking it’s normal, and how they differ from other people with Ordinal Linguistic Personification. Because people with Ordinal Linguistic Personification see numbers as people, when certain numbers combine, it can lead to disaster in their mind (“10 Disadvantages…” 2014). For example, if two is a sweet little girl who wouldn’t harm a fly, and one is an arrogant bully of a boy, then, if those two numbers don’t go together, multiplying them together would just distract that person and they will mess up, leading to a poor grade (“10 Disadvantages…” 2014). Some people may think that people with Ordinal Linguistic Personification can control...
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...Well, as Chris pointed out, I study the human brain, the functions and structure of the human brain. And I just want you to think for a minute about what this entails. Here is this mass of jelly, three-pound mass of jelly you can hold in the palm of your hand, and it can contemplate the vastness of interstellar space. It can contemplate the meaning of infinity and it can contemplate itself contemplating on the meaning of infinity. And this peculiar recursive quality that we call self-awareness, which I think is the holy grail of neuroscience, of neurology, and hopefully, someday, we'll understand how that happens. 0:51OK, so how do you study this mysterious organ? I mean, you have 100 billion nerve cells, little wisps of protoplasm, interacting with each other, and from this activity emerges the whole spectrum of abilitiesthat we call human nature and human consciousness. How does this happen? Well, there are many ways of approaching the functions of the human brain. One approach, the one we use mainly, is to look at patients with sustained damage to a small region of the brain, where there's been a genetic change in a small region of the brain. What then happens is not an across-the-board reduction in all your mental capacities, a sort of blunting of your cognitive ability. What you get is a highly selective loss of one function, with other functions being preserved intact, and this gives you some confidence in assertingthat that part of the brain is somehow involved in mediating...
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