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Re: Colored Worlds/Synesthesia/VN (fwd)
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From: david bull <bulldavid@hotmail.com>
I'm sure many of you have heard of Oliver Sacks. He has studied people
displaying synesthesia, and based stories on them. eg The Man Who Mistook
His Wife for a Hat/ Anthropologist on Mars. Curious stuff.
>From: Galya Diment <galya@u.washington.edu>
>Reply-To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
>To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
>Subject: Colored Worlds/Synesthesia/VN
>Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 08:16:25 -0700
>
>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
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.
I'm sure many of you have heard of Oliver Sacks. He has studied people
displaying synesthesia, and based stories on them. eg The Man Who Mistook
His Wife for a Hat/ Anthropologist on Mars. Curious stuff.
>From: Galya Diment <galya@u.washington.edu>
>Reply-To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
>To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
>Subject: Colored Worlds/Synesthesia/VN
>Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 08:16:25 -0700
>
>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
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.