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New Insights into Synesthesia
regs writes "Synesthesia is a pretty interesting phenomenon to experience and even just contemplate. Those kooky scientists are at it again, with new insights into 'hearing smells', 'seeing sounds', and 'tasting colors'. A recent study seems to shed insight into the brain mechanisms involved in synesthesia. Interesting read."
What's really interesting about this story (IMO) is that the angular gyrus (the area of the brain implicated by the study as being involved in metaphor) is also involved in basic mathematical functions such as addition/subtraction/multiplication, etc. Injury to this part of the brain can result in loss of mathematical ability (sometimes even specifically, eg. retention of multiplication but loss of the ability to subtract)
What would be really interesting would be if they can find a patient or two who *used* to have synaesthesia but then suffered a stroke (or other, similar brain injury) to either the colour area in primary visual cortex (V4?), or to the angular gyrys, and now can no longer 'feel' colour...
Mod early, mod often.
C Flat *is* used, in situations were a B natural would be notationally incorrect. C Natural is a B#, C Flat is a B-Natural. This is because C and B are only a half step apart, as are E and F
You should use AdiumX on your Mac.
One of the authors, VS Ramachandran, gave this year's Reith lectures on the subject of Neuroscience. You can read or listen to the lectures on the Beeb's website. Well worth taking a look at. Some of it is absolutely fascinating.
One of the more famous case studies amongst brain interested researchers. The Mind of a Mnemonist by Aleksandr R. Luria tracks someone who has significant Synesthesia and is able to leverage that to remember ANYTHING for ANY period of time. He wound up using this great power as a sidshow act.
There is an excelent lecture discussing synesthesia here. It was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 a few weeks ago. I really recommend listening to it.
Jonathan
With drugs like speed, crack, coke, heroin, etc, yes that's an issue. WIth acid though, the active dose is like 5-15 micrograms. It's typically taken on a very small piece of blotter paper or a tiny flake of gelatin. Even if the urban legend of LSD being cut with strychnine were true (check out www.erowid.org's LSD section to debunk that) the LD50 (dose at which 50% of subjects experience fatality) of strychnine is around 50mg. that's around 50,000 times as much lsd as you just took. There's just no way to get an even remotely dangerous dose of a contaminant in a hit of acid unless it's sarin or VX or something else that your typical hippie acid-chemist would certainly NOT make.
Bad trips and recurring mental anxiety later in life are about the only risk associated with LSD. (arguably worth the risk considering the spiritually eye-opening experience of tripping)
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It's funny how so many people who have never taken hallucinogens or experienced synesthesia are so eager to put in their $.02 on this thread. Well, I've done both. In a time when I was younger and more reckless, I did LSD. Frequently. In fact, I'd say I used it roughly once per week for a year. I've also experienced synesthesia since I was very young.
Everybody is eager to draw comparisons between these two things because the descriptions that they hear of the two things sound similar. Unfortunately, 95% of the descriptions you hear are misleading.
It's probably worst on the LSD side. So much of what you hear is urban myth, exaggeration, or just crap that people have made up while lying about having taken the drug. The giant pink elephants, spiders, and headless bodies in the closet just don't happen. It's hard to describe what does happen when you take LSD and it's probably not as interesting to listen to. Here is a list of effects, at least some of which one can typically expect from a trip:
1) Things may confuse you that ordinarily wouldn't
2) You may lose all ability to keep track of time
3) Things may make perfect sense that later turn out to be nonsensical rubbish
4) You may have visual hallucinations that involve the shapes of the objects you're viewing distorting. (It is _very_ unlikely you will see something that isn't actually there)
5) You may see patterns (that don't actually exist) in randomly dispersed objects such as threads of carpet or the black and white dots of a TV screen tuned to a channel with no broadcast
6) You may see tracers following moving objects
7) You may see halos around light sources
8) Things you hear will distort in time/frequency/volume or possibly have an echo that isn't actually there
9) Being touched in one place may cause a similar sensation in another place or the sensation may have "echoes" that move around a little
10) You may have hot flashes and/or chills
11) You may sweat profusely
12) You may be fighting down paranoia for a good portion of the experience
13) You may experience synesthesia but not the normal kind
14) You may experience unexplained mood swings
I think these are the bulk of the effects that my friends and I experienced in our LSD-using days. However, there is an additional component to a trip that isn't easily described. There is a portion of the experience that you lose as soon as you sober up. It's a bit like waking up from a dream. You just can't quite wrap your brain around some of the details concerning how you felt and why you thought some of the things you thought. It's difficult to describe.
Synesthesia is also very hard to describe. You can say you "see" the number three as red but you're not really seeing red with your eyes. It's more of an internal thing. It's almost like there's a copy of the three inside your head that's red and that copy kind of overlays itself on the three you're seeing. It's like it's there but it's not. Words really don't accurately describe it. You just have to experience it to understand. I actually have fairly weak synesthesia when it comes to numbers. It's a little stronger for me with words, especially people's names. However, the biggest area where I constantly experience it is audio bleeding into other senses.
From my experience, the synesthesia I've experienced from LSD feels, very different from what I normally experience. For me, on LSD, synesthesia was more like you'd expect it to be from reading the descriptions but it came it short bursts. For example if I were to catch a number three out of the corner of my eye, it would legitimately appear green no matter what color it was. When I would then turn back to look at it, I would see it in its normal color. If somebody were to poke me with a stick in my arm, I would completely feel it in my calf, 100% as if they had poked me there but then the sensation would rapidly snap back to my arm. I dunno, all this stuff is hard to describe.
Even reading my own descriptions I don't feel like I've gotten it quite right and I've been there. All the speculation from people whom have experienced neither is worthless.