David Eagleman

Richard E. Cytowic

How the extraordinary multisensory phenomenon of synesthesia has changed our traditional view of the brain.

Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia

Wednesday is Indigo Blue

Uncovers the strange medical mystery of synesthesia, a condition in which people can taste shapes or hear and smell colors, and suggests that everyone has synesthetic powers.

The Man Who Tasted Shapes

Synesthesia comes from the Greek syn (meaning union) and aisthesis (sensation), literally interpreted as a joining of the senses. Synesthesia is an involuntary joining in which the real information from one sense is joined or accompanies a perception in another. Dr. Cytowic reports extensive research into the physical, psychological, neural, and familial background of a group of synesthets. His findings form the first complete picture of the brain mechanisms that underlie this remarkable perceptual experience. His research demonstrates that this rare condition is brain-based and perceptual and not mind-based, as is the case with memory or imagery. Synesthesia offers a unique and detailed study of a condition which has confounded scientists for more than 200 years.

A Union of the Senses

Synesthesia

The ten people in one million who are synaesthetes are born into a world where one sensation (e.g. sound) conjures up one or more others (e.g. taste or colour). Although scientists have known about synaesthesia for two hundred years, until recently the condition has remained a mystery. Extensive experiments with more than forty synaesthetes led Richard Cytowic to an explanation of synaesthesia that emphasized the primacy of emotion over reason. In this medical detective adventure he reveals the brain to be an active explorer and offers a new view of what it means to be human that turns upside down conventional ideas about reason, emotion, and who we are.

The Man who Tasted Shapes

David M. Eagleman

How the extraordinary multisensory phenomenon of synesthesia has changed our traditional view of the brain. A person with synesthesia might feel the flavor of food on her fingertips, sense the letter “J” as shimmering magenta or the number “5” as emerald green, hear and taste her husband's voice as buttery golden brown. Synesthetes rarely talk about their peculiar sensory gift—believing either that everyone else senses the world exactly as they do, or that no one else does. Yet synesthesia occurs in one in twenty people, and is even more common among artists. One famous synesthete was novelist Vladimir Nabokov, who insisted as a toddler that the colors on his wooden alphabet blocks were “all wrong.” His mother understood exactly what he meant because she, too, had synesthesia. Nabokov's son Dmitri, who recounts this tale in the afterword to this book, is also a synesthete—further illustrating how synesthesia runs in families. In Wednesday Is Indigo Blue, pioneering researcher Richard Cytowic and distinguished neuroscientist David Eagleman explain the neuroscience and genetics behind synesthesia's multisensory experiences. Because synesthesia contradicted existing theory, Cytowic spent twenty years persuading colleagues that it was a real—and important—brain phenomenon rather than a mere curiosity. Today scientists in fifteen countries are exploring synesthesia and how it is changing the traditional view of how the brain works. Cytowic and Eagleman argue that perception is already multisensory, though for most of us its multiple dimensions exist beyond the reach of consciousness. Reality, they point out, is more subjective than most people realize. No mere curiosity, synesthesia is a window on the mind and brain, highlighting the amazing differences in the way people see the world.

Richard E. Cytowic

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