Synesthesia
Natural History of Senses- SYNESTHESIA
At the end of A Natural History of the Senses, there is a chapter about
synesthesia that was very interesting. It started off by explaining the symptoms that
a boy with the disorder experienced. “His world smells to him much as our world
smells to us, but he does not perceive odors as coming through his nose alone. He
hears odors, and sees odors, and feels them too. His world is a melee of pungent
aromas-and pungent sounds, and bitter-smelling sounds, and sweet-smelling sights,
and sour-smelling pressures against the skin.” Of course it is hard to visually
perceive what it would be like to have synesthesia since it is nothing like the way
the brain works for those without the disorder. People with synesthesia experience
stimulation of one sensory pathway that leads to automatic experiences in a
secondary sensory pathway.
The other day I was watching a documentary on savants, people with
exceptional knowledge and memory capacities. This one particular individual was
able to recite the digits of Pi to thousands and thousands of decimal places. He
insisted that he saw objects and numbers in his head and that each number had its
own shape and color. In fact, one day he was asked to make colorful clay molds of
numbers 1-100. With the clay, he formed each number with a slightly different
shape or color. Weeks later he was asked to repeat the same task. It turns out that
his clay molds of each number from week one were identical to the clay molds made
weeks later. Here is the YouTube video on Daniel Tammet, the boy with the
incredible brain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbASOcqc1Ss
At the end of A Natural History of the Senses, there is a chapter about
synesthesia that was very interesting. It started off by explaining the symptoms that
a boy with the disorder experienced. “His world smells to him much as our world
smells to us, but he does not perceive odors as coming through his nose alone. He
hears odors, and sees odors, and feels them too. His world is a melee of pungent
aromas-and pungent sounds, and bitter-smelling sounds, and sweet-smelling sights,
and sour-smelling pressures against the skin.” Of course it is hard to visually
perceive what it would be like to have synesthesia since it is nothing like the way
the brain works for those without the disorder. People with synesthesia experience
stimulation of one sensory pathway that leads to automatic experiences in a
secondary sensory pathway.
The other day I was watching a documentary on savants, people with
exceptional knowledge and memory capacities. This one particular individual was
able to recite the digits of Pi to thousands and thousands of decimal places. He
insisted that he saw objects and numbers in his head and that each number had its
own shape and color. In fact, one day he was asked to make colorful clay molds of
numbers 1-100. With the clay, he formed each number with a slightly different
shape or color. Weeks later he was asked to repeat the same task. It turns out that
his clay molds of each number from week one were identical to the clay molds made
weeks later. Here is the YouTube video on Daniel Tammet, the boy with the
incredible brain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbASOcqc1Ss
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