Chugging Along!
Hey, already I have an audience, and everyone seems so supportive. Wow, this makes it a lot different than before, but I’ll try to keep it cool. Anyway, time for me to start.
As I’ve said in my first post, I was going to talk more about a Neurological condition called
“Synesthesia”. Now, you may think that this would be really boring, but I think that it’s so extraordinary. Seriously, we don’t even know very much about ourselves, and we’re going out and trying to explore the universe. All these amazing people are really just like us. But, that’s enough of an introduction, time to find out what I’m talking about. This artical is one I wrote for my Science Fair project, when I was quite young. Here it is;
‘Synesthesia’
The condition called synesthesia is a neurological occurrence in which two senses work at the same time, together. For example, a person with color-graphemic synesthesia may see a bright light when hearing a certain number. In one of the most common types of synesthesia, a synesthete will see a word as a certain color in their mind. Many people see different colors or hear different sounds depending on what type of synesthesia they have. It had been shown through studies that synesthetes almost never agree on what color they may see or their “reaction”. Some people can even experience three senses at once, but this is an extreme case. Scientists aren’t sure of the number of people with synesthesia, with estimates from 1 in 200 to 1 in 100,000. It is possible that many synesthetes go undiagnosed.
A person most likely to be a synesthete would be a woman, left handed, or someone with a synesthetic family member. Even though there has been written evidence on this condition for about 200 years, still not much is known about it. One reason for the slow progress is because scientists have been debating over the importance of the subject for years. Some think that there is no importance in going farther with research, while others are amazed and curious. Still, there has been recent progress and scientific research showing some characteristics, such as synesthetes have a special way of viewing different symbols.
One recent study done by the psychology section of the University of California (San Diego) had one test that showed synesthetes could point out a shape in a matrix of identically colored 5’s and 2’s. Although in the test below the numbers were colored the same, this picture shows what the image might look like to a synesthete.
The scientific consensus on this topic is this synesthesia is in fact a real condition for a small percentage of the human population.
And that is what makes it truly magical.
Well, I hope that sparked a little bit of interest into you, I’m Gaudyspuds, and tomorrow I’m going to have something about
Savant Syndrome, another interesting (I hope) condition. If you have the time, please comment and come back later!
- Gaudyspuds
February 29th, 2008 at 00:00
Interesting article. I was wondering — sometimes when I pass gas it is so intense that I see stars, feel pins and needles on my belly, and smell turpentine. Is this synesthesia too?
– OZP
February 29th, 2008 at 15:30
Wow, talk about a hard hitting question. No, that isn’t really synesthesia. I don’t know how often you let one rip that large, but that’s not the same thing. Synesthesia occurs automatically where something happens (like you see a letter), you, I hope, have to put great strain on your body to be able to “see stars” and feel pain. About smelling turpentine… what did you eat? Seriously, unless you were to see the smell as a color (and it seems like it would be pretty noticeable in your case if you’re a synesthete), you probably don’t.