Synaesthesia
Correspondences
Nature is a temple where living pillars
Let escape sometimes confused words;
Man traverses it through forests of symbols
That observe him with familiar glances.
Like long echoes that intermingle from afar
In a dark and profound unity,
Vast like the night and like the light,
The perfumes, the colours and the sounds respond.
There are perfumes fresh like the skin of infants
Sweet like oboes, green like prairies,
-And others corrupted, rich and triumphant
That have the expanse of infinite things,
Like ambergris, musk, balsam and incense,
Which sing the ecstasies of the mind and senses.
By
Charles Baudelaire (1821 - 1867)
Synaesthesia
What is Synaesthesia
A subjective sensation of one sense being stimulated by another,
synaesthesia is a non-debilitating perceptual disorder, which means
literally joined sensation. Derived from the Greek words "syn" meaning
join and "aesthesis" meaning perception or to perceive, it is a word
used to describe the involuntary physical experience of cross modal
association. In other words, the stimulation of one sensory modality
reliably causing a perception in one or more different senses. For
example, a synaesthete may see coloured shapes projected into their
field of vision as a result of auditory stimulation.
Types of Synaesthesia
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There are many different types of syaesthesia. In fact, the crossing
over of two or more of the senses means there can be 31 possibilities
of different combinations of the senses. Though it is usually only 2
of the senses that merge bringing it down to just 20 different pairings, (www.macalester.edu/~psych/whathap/UBNRP/synaesthesia/types.html).
It is divided into 2 c...
... middle of paper ...
...u,
"Don't look at me in that tone of voice because you're smelling a
funny colour,"
Think about what is really meant!!
Bibliography
Information in putting together this presentation has been taken from
various sources, including websites, books and previous television
broadcasts.
Other websites used were:
http://www.wam.umd.edu/~mjhickey/stieglitz/synaesthesia.htm
http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-10-cytowic.html
http://www.psychol.ucl.ac.uk/jamie.ward/qanda.htm
http://www.vislab.usyd.edu.au/user/alyons/synaesthesia.html
http://www.doctorhugo.org/synaesthesia/
http://www.wam.umd.edu/~mjhickey/stieglitz/synaesthesia.htm
Book used:
A Natural History Of The Senses, written by Dianne Ackerman,
published by Phoenix1996.
Television Broadcast used:
Horizon, "OrangeSherbet Kisses" - Synaesthesia, A Perceptual Disorder.
Another speaker, Margaret Livingstone delves into the visual aspect of our senses. Livingstone mentions how artists recognize things about vision that neuroscientists are not privy to until years later. Livingstone discussed the differentiation between color and lightness, and how the two contribute differently to a work of art. Color is thought of as “comparing activity” whereas light is thought of as “summing them.” Livingstone indicates that the visual system is subdivided into a ventral system and a dorsal system. The ventral system is responsible for object recognition, face recognition, and color. The dorsal system is responsible for navigating through the environment, special organization, and emotional recognition. The ability for humans to see distance and depth is carried via our colorblind part of our visual system. As a result, Livingstone concludes that one cannot see depth and shading unless the luminance is right to convey three-dimensional.
In this essay I outline Casey O’Callaghan’s liberal view of multimodality. I suggest that our current understanding does not justify such an extensive view on the multimodality of the senses, and I critique his stance on the prevalence of crossmodal interactions between the senses as an over interpretation of the current experimental data. I argue for a more conservative account of crossmodal interactions between the senses, and hypothesize that perception is best described in terms of distributions. To support this hypothesis, I provide evidence in the form of Jonathan Cohen’s account of synesthesia.
Synesthesia is a neurophysiological condition in which a sensory stimulation leads to a secondary perception in another sensory modality. “Synesthesia” comes from the ancient Greek words syn (joining) and aisthēsis (sensation) (Mikuš, 2013). There are two primary forms of synesthetic perception: synesthesia between the senses and synesthesia between senses and concepts (Williams, 2015). The most common manifestations of synesthesia are grapheme-color, tone/voice-color, and number forms, but there
The philosophical theory of dualism holds that mind and body are two separate entities. While dualism presupposes that the two ‘substances’ may interact, it contrasts physicalism by refusing to denote correlation between body and mind as proof of identity. Comparing the two theories, dualism’s invulnerable proof of the existence of qualia manages to evade arguments from physicalism. While a common argument against qualia—non-physical properties defined in Jackson’s Knowledge Argument—targets the unsound nature of epiphenomenalism, this claim is not fatal to the theory of dualism as it contains claims of causation and fails to stand resolute to the conceivability of philosophical zombies. This essay argues that epiphenomenalism, while often designated as a weakness when present in an argument, can remain in valid arguments from qualia.
Synesthesia has many forms ‹ synesthetes may taste shapes or feel odors, for instance, or perceive alphanumeric characters in particular colors. Synesthetic perceptions are involuntary and are reliably triggered by the phenomena that induce them. They are also consistent over time for a given synesthete; that is, a true synesthete for whom the musical note E produces a percept of red triangles on a field of yellow will invariably experience that sound that way.
Physicalism is the position that nothing can exceed past what is physically present, and what is physical is all that there can be. This idea is reductive in that it suggests there is no more to the universe than physical matters, including brain processes, sensations, and human consciousness. J.J.C. Smart explains sensations as a means of commentary on a brain process. He believes that, essentially, brain processes and what we report as sensations are essentially the same thing in that one is an account of the other. He writes in “Sensations and Brain Processes” that “…in so far as a sensation statement is a report of something, that something is in fact a brain process. Sensations are nothing over and above brain processes,” (145). Though
There are many mental diseases in the world. In this paper we will be talking about a mental disease called Aphasia. We will explore what Aphasia is. We will find out how someone is diagnosed with Aphasia. We will learn the different types and treatments for this type of mental disease.
There is a tendency for humans to be trapped by their own preconceptions and to resist anything that goes against those pre-established beliefs with denial, contempt, or outright (and often) violent rejection. In Margaret Atwood’s poem “Progressive Insanities of a Pioneer” and Euripides’ The Bacchae, central characters refuse to accept and believe in the truth and instead decide to side with their individual delusions and beliefs. In particular, Pentheus (in The Bacchae) and the Narrator (in Progressive Insanities of a Pioneer) fail to accept and see Nature. Ultimately, both characters are blind to the power of nature and cannot see what is in front of them. There are several similar stages either character face in each work: an encounter, denial, resistance, underestimation, and finally, acknowledgement of nature.
Perception plays a huge role in someone’s life. “When a distinction is made between sensation and perception, sensation is frequently identified as involving simple “elementary” processes that occur right at the beginning of a sensory system, as when light stimulates receptors in the eye. In contrast, perception is identified with complicated processes that involves higher-order mechanisms such as understanding and memory that involve activity in the brain” (Goldstein, 1980, p. 7). It is simply the ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the five senses. Perception aids us to navigate through the world, avoid danger, make decisions, and prepare for action.
Our five senses –sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch help the ways in which we perceive the world around us. And while they seem to work independently at time they can effect each other and the way we comprehend something. Seeing something pretty, touching something soft, eating something cold and smelling something rotten are the sense we use to connect with the world around us and will all effect how we move forward in that situation. When you look at the top picture say the color of the word not the word itself. It is harder than it seems and takes a little practice to do it efficiently. It is because we see the spelling we were taught not the color it was written in. It is hard to process it the other way, but not impossible. Take the bottom picture for another example is this a
...es his "meditation". Before visions appear, there are flashes and disturbances in color, which are not explainable. The visions often follow a sequence from geometric figures to unfamiliar objects that vary with the individual.
Dementia seems to strike almost every elderly person, it could range from a mild to severe form. Dementia is the “irreversible loss of intellectual functioning caused by organic brain damage or disease. Dementia becomes more common with age, but it is abnormal and even pathological even in the very old,” (Berger 2011, page 678). There are many factors that can cause for a person to have dementia. Although dementia occurs in many people, there are steps people can take to help treat their dementia symptoms. Dementia is not 100 percent preventable, but if a person takes care of their body they may be able to reduce their possibilities of getting it.
D. W. Hamlyn - author. Publisher: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Place of Publication: Sensation and Perception: A History of the Philosophy of Perception. Contributors: London. Publication Year: 1961. Page Number: iii.
Paintings, like many forms of art, are very subjective—what one may find intriguing another may completely disagree. “Art is physical material that affects a physical eye and conscious brain” (Solso, 13). To glance at art, we must go through a process of interpretation in order to understand what it is we are looking at. Solso describes the neurological, perceptual, and cognitive sequence that occurs when we view art, and the often inexpressible effect that a work of art has on us. He shows that there are two aspects to viewing art: nativistic perception—the synchronicity of eye and brain that transforms electromagnetic energy into neuro-chemical codes—which is "hard-wired" into the sensory-cognitive system; and directed perception, which incorporates personal history—the entire set of our expectations and past experiences—and knowledge (Solso, preface)
An experience from everyday life that helps to work out perception and sensation is a football game. A ball could be kicked towards the goals. Two people will see the same ball going in the same direction at the same time yet one could say that the ball was a goal and the other could say that the ball went in through the goals for a point.