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mysteries |
Synaesthesia |
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Are some people's claims to be able to taste shapes, see tastes and hear colours evidence of a paranormal reality, or simply a trick of the brain? It felt so real, he could touch its cold, rounded surface. And it was perfectly smooth, like a flawless column of glass. Although Michael Watson knew there was nothing before him, he couldn't ignore the powerful, tactile sensation. Created in his own mind, this private apparition was not new - he had experienced it many times before, with the same compelling realism, whenever he had enjoyed the cool, bitter-sweet taste of mint. One estimate suggests that one in 25,000 people may have experienced a similar sensory phenomenon to Michael Watson - a person whose bizarre talent was scientifically recorded by the US neuropsychologist Richard E. Cytowic. In the text books, Watson in known as a synaesthete, someone whose senses have the peculiar ability to interplay, influencing and affecting each other in a remarkably consistent manner. Sensory Chat Show. Watson experiences a kind of involuntary cross-talk between his sense of touch and taste, but many other varieties of synaesthesia have been noted. Another of Cytowic's subjects claims to be able to taste words - she even fins that subtle differences in their spelling can affect their flavour. As she explained to Cytowic in the US journal Psyche, 'Some words are a complete "experience" in that they have flavour, texture, temperature... "Lori" tastes like a pencil eraser, but "Laurie" tastes lemony.' Most synaesthetes experience interference between their sense of hearing and sight, a condition known as 'coloured hearing'. Interviewed by Russian psychologist Alexander Luria, a subject known as 'S' recalled the first time he was aware of his coloured hearing. It happened when he was being taught the words of Hebrew prayer as a child. 'The words settled in my mind as puffs of steam of splashes... Even now I see these puffs or splashes when I hear certain sounds.' One Cambridge study has proposed that as many as one in 2,100 of us may have this form of synaesthasia. As there is no reason why people can't live happily with this gift, there may be thousands of synaesthetes who have never sought a medical explanation for their intersensory experiences. Indeed, synaesthesia has been known about for centuries - but few psychologists have devoted time to a serious, methodical study of the phenomenon. Rooted in science, many psychologists feel anxious about researching a phenomenon that does not lend itself easily to systematic enquiry. This reluctance may also have been fuelled by the fact that a significant number of synaesthetes have reported paranormal experiences, such as clairvoyance, psychic healing and psychokinesis - the ability to affect objects at a distance. Real Phenomenon? It's easy for sceptical scientists to dismiss synaesthetes as individuals with ordinary sensory skills and overactive imaginations. Synaesthetes, however, insist that their sensations are as lifelike as any other. Typically, the moment people with coloured hearing hear a sound, colours appear before their eyes. these colours are not obviously imaginary - they seem to exist outside their body. In some cases, colours appear to float on a transparent TV screen, just a few centimetres from their eyes. These colours will always accompany the soundtrack of such a person's life, and, stranger still, the same colours will always be generated by the same sounds. this high level of reality and consistency is found in all forms of synaesthesia. Same Responses. Take the case of a young man Cytowic studied who had 'audiomotor synaesthesia'. One of the strangest examples of synaesthesia, this condition compelled the subject to adopt different bodily postures according to the sounds he heard. The subject was able to respond physically to random sounds as well as normal speech. Amazingly, when re-tested many years later, he made exactly the same physical responses to the same sounds and words. Comical though these experiences seem, it is virtually impossible to imagine what it must be like to be a synaesthete. The reason for this is that synaesthesia is, in essence, a vivid altered-state-of-consciousness experience. In fact, most of us could only glimpse the strange, hallucinatory world that synaesthetes inhabit if we were to take psychoactive drugs. Psychedelic World. Researched by the CIA as a mind-controlling substance, LSD is widely acknowledged to induce synaesthesia. People who have experimented with the drugs mescaline and psilocon have also reported intersensory experiences, as have some heavy users of hashish. Unlike true synaesthesia, drug-induced synaesthesia is short-lived and accompanied by a dissociation from everyday reality. However, many of the synaesthetic images that are induced by LSD are remarkably close to those reported by natural synaesthetes. The link between LSD and naturally induced synaesthesia has been confirmed by lab tests. In the 1930's, Heinrich Kluver, a pioneering researcher from the University of California studied the visual hallucinations experienced by people with coloured hearing. After lengthy interviews with many synaesthetes, he identified four classes of images that could be used to categorize virtually everything they saw. These consisted of criss-crosses and honeycombs, cobwebs, tunnels and cones, and spirals. Nearly 40 years later, the University of California trained a series of researchers to identify these special patterns, which became known as 'form constants'. When the researchers were given LSD under controlled conditions, they were able to categorize almost all of the visual hallucinations they experienced using these forms. The mechanism that triggered natural synaesthetic experiences also seemed to produce psychedelic hallucinations. Intriguingly, form constants occur frequently in painting and craftwork around the world, as well as in prehistoric rock art, much of which is now believed to have been inspired by the use of plant hallucinogens. It is also known that these visual patterns frequently appear as a prelude to out-of-body, near-death or mystical experiences. Other Realms? Perhaps not surprisingly, synaesthesia's link with form constants and mind-altering experiences has led some observers to speculate that the condition points to the existence of another, inner - possibly spiritual - dimension which, under certain conditions, intrudes into physical reality. A belief in such a realm, of course, underpins all religions. And a growing number of theoretical scientists are speculating that if we have brains capable of spiritual experience, it is reasonable to assume that there is an essence of spirituality pervading the cosmos. Synaesthetes, too, report that their most intense experiences can be accompanied by vivid premonitions and dream-like feelings of being out of their bodies, as if they are living in two worlds simultaneously. Is it possible that synaesthetes are somehow wired into another reality? Natural causes. Naturally, mainstream science holds no truck with anything that smacks of mysticism. in his book The Man Who Tasted Shapes, Cytowic warns us against the temptation to attach any spiritual significance to form constants. He believes it is far more likely that these shapes are patterns our brains are specially designed to recognise for reasons of communication and survival - although he fails to explain what these reasons are. For all their resistance to the idea of a paranormal reality, however, scientists are still at a loss to explain what actually causes synaesthesia. At one time, it was thought that people developed coloured hearing because of their conditioning - for example, because they used coloured alphabet blocks as children. But after careful scrutiny, this simple explanation has been ruled out. It also seems unlikely that coloured hearing is produced by association. While certain words like 'sky' or 'fire' have obvious colour associations, nothing can explain the consistent - yet arbitrary - colourings that synaesthetes give to the countless thousands of other words in their vocabulary. Today, perhaps reflecting the recent advances made in neurology and genetics, some scientists are inclined to think that the key to synaesthesia may lie in genetic inheritance. Almost as long as people have known synaesthesia, they have been aware that it runs in families. The Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov, for instance - author of the controversial novel Lolita - came from a family of synaesthetes. His mother understood him when he complained as a child that his wooden letter blocks were all painted the wrong colours. After marrying a synaesthetic wife, Nabokov has a son, Dimitri, who was also a synaesthete. Inherited Trait? When describing his family's gift in 1962, Nabokov remarked that his son's condition seemed to be a direct mix of the synaesthesia experienced by himself and his wife. For example, an 'M' created a pink colour for Vladimir and a blue colour for his wife, but their son saw the letter as vivid purple. Despite the genetic link, many psychologists believe that synaesthesia is a hangover from our state of consciousness in early infancy. New-born babies are thought to be natural synaesthetes. As US psychologist Daphne Maurer explains,, children's senses are 'not well differentiated but are instead intermingled in a synaesthetic confusion'. Significantly,, young children are also susceptible to paranormal experiences such as past-life recall, clairvoyance, and metal bending. Could it be that in childhood, our senses are less constrained by the laws of nature, opening us up to other realities? Hi-tech scans of synaesthetes' brains seem to back up this idea. Unlike the rest of the population, when people with coloured hearing are exposed to sounds, their visual cortex - the part of the brain that deals with images - becomes more active. This suggests synaesthesia is due to some form of communication between normally separate parts of the brain. Search For A Theory It is still too early to say what this evidence means in terms of our understanding of the human mind. But if scientists can find out what creates this strange intersensory communication, and why most of us loose it in later childhood, they may one day have a better insight into the nature of consciousness and reality. |
Sources: The X Factor By: Brenda Bach |