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HEARING COLOURS, EATING SOUNDS
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MISSED A PROGRAMME?
Go to the Listen Again page |
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Why do some people perceive words and numbers as colours? |
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As many as one in 2000 people has an extraordinary condition in which the five senses intermingle. This major two part series reveals how synaesthesia is changing our understanding of the world of neuroscience.
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| Presenter Georgina Ferry |
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Georgina Ferry comments:
"I became aware of synaesthesia when my mother suddenly announced, a few years ago, that as a coloured hearing synaesthete she was a subject in one of the studies organised by Simon Baron-Cohen in Cambridge. She asked if I and my three siblings would also participate by giving a mouth swab for genetic analysis. Although I've never had anything that I could identify as a synaesthetic experience, I agreed; I understand my DNA is currently sitting in a fridge in Oxford waiting for someone to get round to analysing it! It transpired that my sister was also a synaesthete but had never considered there was anything remarkable about it.
"With this family history, I was only too pleased to learn more about the subject through interviewing synaesthetes and psychologists for this programme. I was left in no doubt that many people have powerfully augmented sensory experiences that also have an impact on cognitive skills such as memory and reasoning. I'm still not sure I know why; is it just a freak accident of miswiring in the baby brain, or some more subtle genetic variation in sensitivity to colours, shapes and sounds? Many new lines of research are now being followed up; it all adds to a picture of the brain that never ceases to amaze me with the exquisite complexity of its myriad connections."
A Synaesthete's Experience:
Coloured Words
'When I was 7, I once sketched out the alphabet in the colors each letter
"ought" to be. The letter A, for example, looked right to me if it was
fire-engine red, but if it was not, I felt it was someone else's letter A.'
Martin Goss, USA
Tactile Sounds
'Deeper sounds appear as if they're resonating within me, in different places of the body; higher pitches like birds outside - slight itch, like tiny needles plucking on my arms; rain - like
soft peas dropping on my chest and back and arms.'
, German
Synaesthetic Perception
If you think you may have 'grapheme-colour' synaesthesia - seeing specific colours in response to specific letters and numbers - take a look at this 'pop-out' test (courtesy of Ed Hubbard). It's not an acid test for synaesthesia, but grapheme-colour synaesthetes should quickly be able to distinguish a shape among the numbers.
How quickly do you see the '2's among the '5's?
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Now view the pop-out test as a synaesthete might see it at the bottom of the page.
More Information:
- links to many synaesthesia organisations and articles
To Volunteer for Synaesthesia Research
UK
E-mail: Richard Skelton dept of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol
E-mail: jamie.ward@ucl.ac.uk
E-mail: s.chopping@iop.kcl.ac.uk
Tel: 0207 848 0705
USA
E-mail: Richard@Cytowic.net
E-mail: edhubbard@psy.ucsd.edu
E-mail: daysa@muohio.edu
Tel: USA (513) 529 - 7106
To be added to the Synaesthesia discussion list
contact Sean Day.
To find out more about Jane's paintings or Joseph's
music visit:
or
Books
by John Harrison
Oxford University Press - ISBN: 0192632450
by Richard E Cytowic
The MIT Press (A Bradford Book) - ISBN: 0262531526
by Patricia Lynne Duffy
W.H. Freeman & Company - ISBN: 0716740885
by Kevin T Dann
Yale University Press - ISBN: 0300066198
This is how a synaesthete might see the pop-out test shown above:
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These figures are used by kind permission of
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RELATED LINKS |
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主播大秀i Science: Come to Your Senses
Radio 3: I send you this Cadmium Red...
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