I'm really interested in synesthesia and have had some great discussions about it in psych, neuro, and even anthropogy courses. I found a couple of links that give some more details about synesthesia. This first link is a good overview and covers some of the questions that came up in class today:
http://www.neurologyreviews.com/jul02/nr_jul02_mindseye.html
Here is a link to one of Ramachandran's articles - it also includes the kiki and bouba finding. This is a pretty dense and in-depth article, but take a look at some of the sections if you are interested in the topic.
psy.ucsd.edu/chip/pdf/Synaesthesia%20-%20JCS.pdf
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4 comments:
Thanks for pointing out these articles, especially the Ramachandran one.
I wanted to add another site to check out, which includes demos and more examples of synesthetic experience:
http://web.mit.edu/synesthesia/www/
I don't have any links or articles to share right now, but I was curious about something in regards to synesthesia. If somebody has synesthesia, even though it's not harmful, can it eventually lead to mental problems or illness when time comes around to holidays? With so many different foods and music and colors. Can someone with synesthesia just completely hate Christmas?
Interesting questions, Greg! As far as I know, there aren't any known associations between specific mental disorders and synesthesia. There is a genetic component to synesthesia and also various mental disorders, but inheriting one doesn't necessarily mean inheriting the other. I don't know of any bad associations between the holidays and having synesthesia! But bad associations could of course be caused by other factors too.
to follow Michelle's comment,
i found this article on wikipedia. i know Wikipedia is not always a reliable source, but this seems legit, and i followed the references, all of which were published articles or books.
[please not that this was taken from Wikipedia, and the original (anonymous) author of the article along with the original author(s) of the sources used to create this article]
Although sometimes spoken of as a "neurological condition," synesthesia is not listed in either the DSM-IV or the ICD classifications, since it does not, in general, interfere with normal daily functioning. Indeed most synesthetes report that their experiences are neutral, or even pleasant.[13] Rather, like color blindness or perfect pitch, synesthesia is a difference in perceptual experience and the term "neurological" simply reflects the brain basis of this perceptual difference. To date, no research has demonstrated a consistent association between synesthetic experience and other neurological or psychiatric conditions, although this is an active area of research (see below for associated cognitive traits).
and to answer GYee,
being a Synesthete myself, i've found that with grapheme to colour and music to colour experiences aren't as tangible as true colour that every (non-colour blind) person can see.
i've described it before like this:
imagine the earth, everything you see, touch, smell, hear, taste -- everything -- was turned 2D. it is all now a plane, as in the geometrical term plane, a 2D expanse of which there is no depth but only length and width. This plane is floating horizantally in front of you. that is everything you percieve on that plane.
for me, i do not know other's experiences, imagine there is a second plane, lying parallel to the plane that consists everything real. this second plane is less tangible. this second plane is a plane that i see, a layer on top of the real world plane.
so i often get confused with real colours when i perceive the mental colours. i love Christmas as much as the next guy, but again i stress that this is my personal experience, and you'd have to take a poll or study of many synesthetes to know the true overall answer coming from an entire population.
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