Subject
Colored Worlds/Synesthesia/VN (fwd)
From
Date
Body
I tried forwarding it yesterday but this message and the next came back
for some reason as undelivered -- sorry if these are duplicates.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 08:16:25 -0700 (PDT)
From: Galya Diment <galya@u.washington.edu>
To: Nabokov <NABOKV-L@listserv.ucsb.edu>
Subject: Colored Worlds/Synesthesia/VN
From: Sandy P. Klein <spklein52@hotmail.com>
http://more.abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/dyehard/dyehard020328.html
Colored Worlds
Scientists Examine How a Disorder Makes Some See a Color-Coded World
By Lee Dye
Special to ABCNEWS.com
March 28 — Even as a child, the man called "WO" knew he saw the world
quite differently than his friends.
Letters, numbers and words all had distinct colors.
He knew it, because he could see it with his own eyes. To him, a page of
black print didn't look black at all. It was a symphony of color. The
number "2" was bright orange, "5" was green, and so forth.
His young friends, no doubt, thought he was a bit nutty, but he had one
close ally. His mother understood. She knew words had colors, because
she, too, could see them. They weren't the same colors her son saw, but
they were colors, nonetheless.
Both WO (as he is anonymously referred to in a recent study) and his
mother had a condition known as synesthesia (rhymes with anesthesia),
that causes some people to hear colors, feel sounds and taste shapes.
Scientists have known about synesthesia for at least 300 years, but it
wasn't taken all that seriously until recently. People who claimed to
hear colors were dismissed as hallucinatory, or worse.
Condition Through the Ages
A decade ago Richard E. Cytowic, a neurologist, chronicled a number of
case studies in a popular book, The Man Who Tasted Shapes, and scientists
realized the time was ripe to reopen the case of synesthesia. New testing
procedures, and new tools that could peer inside the brain, identifying
areas that are active during various conditions, could allow them to see
if there really was anything to all this.
And it turns out that there is. WO really does see the number 2 as bright
orange, just as thousands of others around the world see it as blue, or
yellow, or whatever. It is a concept that is quite difficult for the rest
of us to grasp.
"It's like trying to describe color to someone who doesn't see color,"
says Thomas J. Palmieri, a Vanderbilt University psychologist and lead
author of a study on WO that appears the March 19 issue of the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In his earlier research, Cytowic documented a number of startling cases,
including such well-known figures as Russian novelist Valdimir Nabokov,
who as a child complained to his mother that the colors of the letters on
his wooden alphabet blocks were all wrong. She knew, because she also saw
letters as colors, and they clearly were not the same as those on the
blocks.
The condition, which is genetically transmitted, seems especially
prevalent among highly talented and gifted persons. The Russian composer
Alexander Scriabin, who saw sounds as colors, even composed a symphony in
1910 that featured a colored light exhibit that he, no doubt, could see
even without the lights. Other synesthetes, as they call themselves,
include the poets Baudelaire and Rimbaud, painters Kandinsky and Klee,
and the noted physicist Richard Feynman.
No one knows just how many people have the condition. Estimates range
from one person out of every 300, to one out of every few thousand. The
number is vague for obvious reasons. Some people learned early on not to
talk about it out of fear of being regarded as odd. And those who have it
tend to like it, so they don't feel a need to seek out medical help.
________________________________________________________________________________
Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: Click Here
for some reason as undelivered -- sorry if these are duplicates.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 08:16:25 -0700 (PDT)
From: Galya Diment <galya@u.washington.edu>
To: Nabokov <NABOKV-L@listserv.ucsb.edu>
Subject: Colored Worlds/Synesthesia/VN
From: Sandy P. Klein <spklein52@hotmail.com>
http://more.abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/dyehard/dyehard020328.html
Colored Worlds
Scientists Examine How a Disorder Makes Some See a Color-Coded World
By Lee Dye
Special to ABCNEWS.com
March 28 — Even as a child, the man called "WO" knew he saw the world
quite differently than his friends.
Letters, numbers and words all had distinct colors.
He knew it, because he could see it with his own eyes. To him, a page of
black print didn't look black at all. It was a symphony of color. The
number "2" was bright orange, "5" was green, and so forth.
His young friends, no doubt, thought he was a bit nutty, but he had one
close ally. His mother understood. She knew words had colors, because
she, too, could see them. They weren't the same colors her son saw, but
they were colors, nonetheless.
Both WO (as he is anonymously referred to in a recent study) and his
mother had a condition known as synesthesia (rhymes with anesthesia),
that causes some people to hear colors, feel sounds and taste shapes.
Scientists have known about synesthesia for at least 300 years, but it
wasn't taken all that seriously until recently. People who claimed to
hear colors were dismissed as hallucinatory, or worse.
Condition Through the Ages
A decade ago Richard E. Cytowic, a neurologist, chronicled a number of
case studies in a popular book, The Man Who Tasted Shapes, and scientists
realized the time was ripe to reopen the case of synesthesia. New testing
procedures, and new tools that could peer inside the brain, identifying
areas that are active during various conditions, could allow them to see
if there really was anything to all this.
And it turns out that there is. WO really does see the number 2 as bright
orange, just as thousands of others around the world see it as blue, or
yellow, or whatever. It is a concept that is quite difficult for the rest
of us to grasp.
"It's like trying to describe color to someone who doesn't see color,"
says Thomas J. Palmieri, a Vanderbilt University psychologist and lead
author of a study on WO that appears the March 19 issue of the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In his earlier research, Cytowic documented a number of startling cases,
including such well-known figures as Russian novelist Valdimir Nabokov,
who as a child complained to his mother that the colors of the letters on
his wooden alphabet blocks were all wrong. She knew, because she also saw
letters as colors, and they clearly were not the same as those on the
blocks.
The condition, which is genetically transmitted, seems especially
prevalent among highly talented and gifted persons. The Russian composer
Alexander Scriabin, who saw sounds as colors, even composed a symphony in
1910 that featured a colored light exhibit that he, no doubt, could see
even without the lights. Other synesthetes, as they call themselves,
include the poets Baudelaire and Rimbaud, painters Kandinsky and Klee,
and the noted physicist Richard Feynman.
No one knows just how many people have the condition. Estimates range
from one person out of every 300, to one out of every few thousand. The
number is vague for obvious reasons. Some people learned early on not to
talk about it out of fear of being regarded as odd. And those who have it
tend to like it, so they don't feel a need to seek out medical help.
________________________________________________________________________________
Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: Click Here