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Synaesthesia and the perception of "auras" around people
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Lance
May 5, 2012, 8:07:11 PM5/5/12
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Perhaps of interest. See
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-scientific-evidence-healers-aura-people.html
Lance
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-scientific-evidence-healers-aura-people.html
Lance
Lance
May 5, 2012, 8:28:50 PM5/5/12
to
> http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-scientific-evidence-healers-aur...
>
> Lance
Quote:
" but it is actually a case of self-deception, as synesthesia is not
an extrasensory power, but a subjective and 'adorned' perception of
reality", the researchers state."
Hmm. I think all perception is subjective and "adorned". It is not
possible, as Kant knew, to perceive things as they really are.
Lance
>
> Lance
Quote:
" but it is actually a case of self-deception, as synesthesia is not
an extrasensory power, but a subjective and 'adorned' perception of
reality", the researchers state."
Hmm. I think all perception is subjective and "adorned". It is not
possible, as Kant knew, to perceive things as they really are.
Lance
Peter Brooks
May 6, 2012, 12:12:12 AM5/6/12
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I'd not heard of synæsthesia colours and physiognomy - I'm not
sceptical, it makes sense that it's possible, I'd just not heard of it
(or perhaps don't remember hearing of it). It does provide a credible
source for the ætiology of auras (in the OED sense; 'c.2.c A supposed
subtle emanation from and enveloping living persons and things, viewed
by mystics as consisting of the essence of the individual, serving as
the medium for the operation of mesmeric and similar influences.').
Dave Smith
May 6, 2012, 5:47:10 AM5/6/12
to
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120504110024.htm
Apparently, a link between synaesthesia and seeing auras has been suggested before:
http://www.skepdic.com/auras.html
Dave Smith
Dave Smith
May 6, 2012, 5:41:32 AM5/6/12
to
Dave Smith
Lance
May 6, 2012, 10:03:24 AM5/6/12
to
On May 6, 11:41 am, Dave Smith <davidelliottsm...@btinternet.com>
wrote:
Plato, I think. But we know from physics and chemistry that matter is
not what we see. Colour isn't really in the world out there - it is in
our heads. The image on our retina is flat but we see in 3-D. When we
hear speech sounds we hear them in categories that don't exist in the
sonogram recoding of the sounds. Of course if there were no connection
with the world out there perception would be useless. But what we
perceive isn't the world but a useful fiction, adorned by
consciousness in various ways. Of course we can use various methods to
correct perception when it is misleading or wrong. But that still
doesn't give us direct access to the world...
Lance
wrote:
not what we see. Colour isn't really in the world out there - it is in
our heads. The image on our retina is flat but we see in 3-D. When we
hear speech sounds we hear them in categories that don't exist in the
sonogram recoding of the sounds. Of course if there were no connection
with the world out there perception would be useless. But what we
perceive isn't the world but a useful fiction, adorned by
consciousness in various ways. Of course we can use various methods to
correct perception when it is misleading or wrong. But that still
doesn't give us direct access to the world...
Lance
Dave Smith
May 6, 2012, 10:40:51 AM5/6/12
to
Dave Smith
Garret K
May 12, 2012, 3:48:21 PM5/12/12
to
> http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-scientific-evidence-healers-aur...
>
> Lance
I'm glad to see that a synaesthesia connection finally dawned on a
group of science researchers as an explanation to explore. Rather than
it just occurring to the person on the street almost 20 years ago,
upon reading Cytowic's "The Man Who Tasted Shapes"; or a dozen or so
years ago when hearing of VS Ramachandran conducting tests that
verified synaesthesia as being a legitimate clinical condition.
>
> Lance
I'm glad to see that a synaesthesia connection finally dawned on a
group of science researchers as an explanation to explore. Rather than
it just occurring to the person on the street almost 20 years ago,
upon reading Cytowic's "The Man Who Tasted Shapes"; or a dozen or so
years ago when hearing of VS Ramachandran conducting tests that
verified synaesthesia as being a legitimate clinical condition.
Lance
May 13, 2012, 6:49:49 PM5/13/12
to
as a sickness.
Lance
Garret K
May 14, 2012, 2:56:18 AM5/14/12
to
clinical: [def. 4] Involving the use of laboratory methods and
equipment.
Yet even if synaesthesia does capture neurological interest or some
degree of classification in clinical neurology, the cart couldn't come
before the horse. That is, synaesthesia first needed to be
diagnosable, testable, and a real (verified) condition, rather than
fake or erroneous. "Being a Martian is not uncomfortable or a
handicap" would be a meaningless evaluation or re-evaluation if
Martians weren't accepted as legitimate to begin with. Or another
example, of a psychic acting as if the medical profession gives a
damn: "The benefits of my paranormal powers outweigh any negatives
stemming from them. I don't consider this a disease, I even make a
living from it."
Richard Cytowic, 1993: "Based on my reading and first hand experience,
I set about to formulate clear-cut criteria for diagnosing
synaesthesia. The oldest criticism I had encountered against
synaesthesia being 'real,' or even a phenomenon worthy of scientific
attention, was that it was subjective. That is, it had no external
manifestations. It was a condition knowable only through the reports
of those who claimed to experience it. [...] Many people intuitively
feel that research based on experiential reports is 'unscientific'
because it is not objective. They want a machine to reduce it to
numbers. Nonsense. Subjective experiences are the bread and butter of
clinical neurology. They are, for example, the only means in classical
neurology to assess any sensory quality, especially pain. There are
abundant examples where verbal reports alone have changed our concept
of brain function." (P73)
Lance
May 14, 2012, 3:09:22 AM5/14/12
to
(they associate words, letters, and sounds with particular colours)
and a group without are asked for the colours they associate with
particular words, letters and sounds, and then are re-tested a year or
two later, that the synaesthesics are consistent in the colours they
choose but the non-synaesthesics are not. That suggests that
synaesthesia is real.
Lance
Garret K
May 14, 2012, 3:24:22 AM5/14/12
to
"...the cart couldn't come before the horse...."
I meant the opposite, of course. The devious transplanted hand from an
ex-convict intermittently types the reverse of what I think. Or I'm
just evidence that perception isn't passive or non-mediated by
intellective processes, as direct realists want to believe. What I'm
thinking is occasionally what I see when looking over or searching for
any rebellious errors of the manual appendage.
I meant the opposite, of course. The devious transplanted hand from an
ex-convict intermittently types the reverse of what I think. Or I'm
just evidence that perception isn't passive or non-mediated by
intellective processes, as direct realists want to believe. What I'm
thinking is occasionally what I see when looking over or searching for
any rebellious errors of the manual appendage.
Garret K
May 14, 2012, 3:32:10 AM5/14/12
to
scepticism to rest (hopefully for most, anyway).
Dave Smith
May 14, 2012, 5:03:40 AM5/14/12
to
On Monday, May 14, 2012 8:09:22 AM UTC+1, Lance wrote:
I think there is much objective evidence (i.e. evidence from a third-person perspective) that synaesthesia is real). Besides the evidence from perceptual tests, there is also evidence from genetics and neurology. Here's a relevant passage from an article by Ramachandran and Hubbard:
http://www.imprint.co.uk/pdf/R_H-follow-up.pdf
For any new phenomenon—a Kuhnian ‘anomaly’ to grab people’s attention—
three different criteria must be fulfilled. First, the phenomenon must be real and reliably repeatable. Second, there must be a candidate mechanism to explain the effect in terms of known laws. And third, it must have broad implications beyond a narrow confines of one speciality. Thus, telepathy fulfills criterion three (vast implications if true) but not one or two, so it does not get taken seriously. Bacterial transformation — the transmutation of one species of bacterium A into another species B — by merely culturing the chemical extract of B with A satisfied criterion one (it was reliably repeated and published in a famous journal) and criterion three (it challenged the basic law of biology that species are immutable and stable) yet it was ignored because it was discovered in the pre DNA era so no one could even conceive of a mechanism that could explain it. Similarly, continental drift satisfied criterion one—many observations pointed to it (like the distribution of fossils, the ‘fit’ between continent outlines, etc.) and criterion three — it was obviously important — but it was rejected because, again, there was no mechanism that could account for it, that is until plate tectonics was discovered.
The problem with synaesthesia was that until recently none of these three criteria were fulfilled. Consequently synaesthesia has long been ignored by ‘mainstream’ neuroscience and psychology. Without unambiguous tests like our ‘popout’ test — segregation of 2s from 5s — it was hard to be sure that they really were actually seeing the colour, so it was not clear if the phenomenon was real.Second, no candidate mechanism was proposed except in very vague terms (such as ‘mixing up senses’ in some primitive brain region, an idea that was too vague to be testable). The idea we proposed—that in number colour synaesthesia there
is cross-activation specifically in the fusiform gyrus (in lower synaesthetes) and
TPO junction/angular gyrus (in higher synaesthetes) has the advantage that it can
be tested with brain imaging (see, e.g., Hubbard et al., 2003; Nunn et al., 2002).
And third, we have tried to show that synaesthesia is no mere quirk in some people’s
brains; it has broad implications and may give us an experimental handle on
elusive phenomena likemetaphor, abstract thinking and the evolution of language.
Yes, there is a variety of objective evidence (i.e. evidence from a third-person perspective):
http://www.imprint.co.uk/pdf/R_H-follow-up.pdf
Dave Smith
I think there is much objective evidence (i.e. evidence from a third-person perspective) that synaesthesia is real). Besides the evidence from perceptual tests, there is also evidence from genetics and neurology. Here's a relevant passage from an article by Ramachandran and Hubbard:
http://www.imprint.co.uk/pdf/R_H-follow-up.pdf
For any new phenomenon—a Kuhnian ‘anomaly’ to grab people’s attention—
three different criteria must be fulfilled. First, the phenomenon must be real and reliably repeatable. Second, there must be a candidate mechanism to explain the effect in terms of known laws. And third, it must have broad implications beyond a narrow confines of one speciality. Thus, telepathy fulfills criterion three (vast implications if true) but not one or two, so it does not get taken seriously. Bacterial transformation — the transmutation of one species of bacterium A into another species B — by merely culturing the chemical extract of B with A satisfied criterion one (it was reliably repeated and published in a famous journal) and criterion three (it challenged the basic law of biology that species are immutable and stable) yet it was ignored because it was discovered in the pre DNA era so no one could even conceive of a mechanism that could explain it. Similarly, continental drift satisfied criterion one—many observations pointed to it (like the distribution of fossils, the ‘fit’ between continent outlines, etc.) and criterion three — it was obviously important — but it was rejected because, again, there was no mechanism that could account for it, that is until plate tectonics was discovered.
The problem with synaesthesia was that until recently none of these three criteria were fulfilled. Consequently synaesthesia has long been ignored by ‘mainstream’ neuroscience and psychology. Without unambiguous tests like our ‘popout’ test — segregation of 2s from 5s — it was hard to be sure that they really were actually seeing the colour, so it was not clear if the phenomenon was real.Second, no candidate mechanism was proposed except in very vague terms (such as ‘mixing up senses’ in some primitive brain region, an idea that was too vague to be testable). The idea we proposed—that in number colour synaesthesia there
is cross-activation specifically in the fusiform gyrus (in lower synaesthetes) and
TPO junction/angular gyrus (in higher synaesthetes) has the advantage that it can
be tested with brain imaging (see, e.g., Hubbard et al., 2003; Nunn et al., 2002).
And third, we have tried to show that synaesthesia is no mere quirk in some people’s
brains; it has broad implications and may give us an experimental handle on
elusive phenomena likemetaphor, abstract thinking and the evolution of language.
http://www.imprint.co.uk/pdf/R_H-follow-up.pdf
Dave Smith
Peter Brooks
May 14, 2012, 6:30:14 AM5/14/12
to
On May 14, 11:03 am, Dave Smith <davidelliottsm...@btinternet.com>
wrote:
give a handle on these?
Is it so common that it affects our use of metaphor, abstract thinking
and language?
Or is it that a common mechanism lies behind both these and
synaesthesia?
wrote:
> On Monday, May 14, 2012 8:09:22 AM UTC+1, Lance wrote:
>
>
> be tested with brain imaging (see, e.g., Hubbard et al., 2003; Nunn et al., 2002).
> And third, we have tried to show that synaesthesia is no mere quirk in some people’s
> brains; it has broad implications and may give us an experimental handle on
> elusive phenomena likemetaphor, abstract thinking and the evolution of language.
>
Nicely argued. I wonder about this last point, though. How does it
>
>
> be tested with brain imaging (see, e.g., Hubbard et al., 2003; Nunn et al., 2002).
> And third, we have tried to show that synaesthesia is no mere quirk in some people’s
> brains; it has broad implications and may give us an experimental handle on
> elusive phenomena likemetaphor, abstract thinking and the evolution of language.
>
give a handle on these?
Is it so common that it affects our use of metaphor, abstract thinking
and language?
Or is it that a common mechanism lies behind both these and
synaesthesia?
Dave Smith
May 14, 2012, 7:26:28 PM5/14/12
to
http://www.imprint.co.uk/pdf/R_H-follow-up.pdf
Dave Smith
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