Synaesthesia

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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.

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