The Synesthesia Experience

“Explores a dimension of synesthesia long encountered in reports of synesthetes: its relation to mystical and artistic vision . . . fascinating accounts.” —Patricia Lynne Duffy, author of Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens “The Synesthesia Experience will open up for you a whole new world in our universe.” —The Amazing Kreskin What does blue taste like to you? A violinist sees a scarlet form when he plays a certain note; a rock star sees waves of blue and green as he composes a ballad; an actress tastes cake when she utters the word “table.” Described by some as a superpower, this mingling of the senses is called synesthesia, and the people who possess this amazing gift are called synesthetes. What happens when a journalist turns her lens on a mystery happening in her own life? Maureen Seaberg did just that and spent a year exploring her synesthesia. What she learned is that synesthesia is not an idle “brain tick” but a unique ability to tap into and reveal a greater creative universe and even the divine. Join her as she visits top neuroscientists, rock stars, violinists, other synesthetes, philosophers, savants, quantum physicists, and even Tibetan lamas on her journey toward the truth. Famous synesthetes and experts interviewed in the book include Billy Joel, Itzhak Perlman, Pharrell Williams, Dr. Dean Radin, Dr. Amit Goswami, and Dylan Lauren.

“Explores a dimension of synesthesia long encountered in reports of synesthetes: its relation to mystical and artistic vision . . . fascinating accounts.”—Patricia Lynne Duffy, author of Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens What happens when a journalist turns her lens on a mystery happening in her own life? Maureen Seaberg did just that and lived for a year exploring her synesthesia. The wondrous brain trait is often described as blended senses, but for Maureen, synesthesia is not an idle “brain tick” that can be explained away by science (although it does offer some important clues). It is a unique ability to tap into and reveal a greater creative universe and even the divine. Join her as she visits top neuroscientists, rock stars, violinists, other synesthetes, philosophers, savants, quantum physicists and even Tibetan lamas in her journey toward the truth. Step into Maureen’s shimmering alternate universe as she explores this fascinating subject, combining clear explanations of groundbreaking scientific research with an exploration of deeper spiritual truths. “Tasting the Universe is not only the brilliant writing of a top, professional journalist looking in on a strange but romantic phenomena, but it is the writing of a person who could embrace the feelings of those she interviews, because author Seaberg herself possesses this remarkable gift of synesthesia. I predict when you pick up this book, you will be unable to put it down, as it will open up for you a whole new world in our universe.”—The Amazing Kreskin

Revealing the neuroscience and genetics behind synesthesia—and how this multi-sensory phenomenon changed our 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 1 in 20 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. Wednesday Is Indigo Blue reveals how the extraordinary multisensory phenomenon of synesthesia has changed our traditional view of the brain. Because synesthesia contradicted existing theory, researcher Richard Cytowic spent 20 years persuading colleagues that it was a real—and important—brain phenomenon rather than a mere curiosity. Today, scientists in 15 countries are exploring synesthesia and how it is changing the traditional view of how the brain works. Cytowic and neuroscientist David 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.

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.

Everyday we vicariously experience a range of states that we observe in other people: we may “feel” embarrassed when witnessing another making a social faux pas, or we may feel sadness when we see a loved one upset. In some cases this process appears to be implicit. For instance, observing pain in others may activate pain-related neural processes but without generating an overt feeling of pain. In other cases, people report a more literal, conscious sharing of affective or somatic states and this has sometimes been described as representing an extreme form of empathy. By contrast, there appear to be some people who are limited in their ability to vicariously experience the states of others. This may be the case in several psychiatric, neurodevelopmental, and personality disorders where deficits in interpersonal understanding are observed, such as schizophrenia, autism, and psychopathy. In recent decades, neuroscientists have paid significant attention to the understanding of the “social brain,” and the way in which neural processes govern our understanding of other people. In this Research Topic, we wish to contribute towards this understanding and ask for the submission of manuscripts focusing broadly on the neural underpinnings of vicarious experience. This may include theoretical discussion, case studies, and empirical investigation using behavioural techniques, electrophysiology, brain stimulation, and neuroimaging in both healthy and clinical populations. Of specific interest will be the neural correlates of individual differences in traits such as empathy, how we distinguish between ourselves and other people, and the sensorimotor resonant mechanisms that may allow us to put ourselves in another’s shoes.

Synesthesia is a fascinating phenomenon which has captured the imagination of scientists and artists alike. This title brings together a broad body of knowledge about this condition into one definitive state-of-the-art handbook.

The present Research Topic explores closely related aspects of mental functioning, namely an interplay between perception and cognition, interactions among various sensory modalities, and finally, more or less unified conscious experiences arising in the context of these relations. Contributions emphasize a high flexibility observed in perception and may be seen as potential challenges to the traditional modular architecture of perceptual systems. Although the articles describe different phenomena, they follow one common theme - to investigate broadly understood unified experience - by studying either perception-cognition integration or the integration between sensory modalities. These integrative processes may well apply to subpersonal unconscious representations. However, the aim here is to approach phenomenal experience and thus a straightforward way of thinking about it is in terms of conscious perception. Putting together scientific and philosophical concerns, this special issue encourages extending the study of perceptual experience beyond the single sense perception to advance our understanding of the complex interdependencies between different sensory modalities, other mental domains, and various kinds of unifying relations within conscious experience. It exhibits a remarkable need to study these phenomena in tangent, and so, the authors examine a variety of ways in which our perceptual experiences may be cross-modal or multisensory, integrated, embodied, synesthetic, cognitively penetrated, or otherwise affected by top-down influences. The Research Topic comprises theoretical and empirical contributions of such fields as philosophy of mind, cognitive science, psychology, and neuroscience in the form of hypothesis and theory articles, original research articles, opinion papers, reviews, and commentaries.

Synaesthesia is a rare experience in which one property of a stimulus evokes a secondary experience that is not typically associated with the first (e.g. hearing words can evoke tastes). In recent years a number of studies have highlighted the authenticity of synaesthesia and attempted to use the experience to inform us about typical processes in perception and cognition. This Research Topic brings together research on synaesthesia and typical cross modal interactions to discuss the mechanisms of synaesthesia and what it can tell us about typical perceptual processes. Topics include, but are not limited to, the neurocognitive mechanisms that give rise to synaesthesia; the extent to which synaesthesia does / does not share commonalities with typical cross-modal correspondences; broader cognitive and perceptual consequences that are linked to synaesthesia; and perspectives on the origins / defining characteristics of synaesthesia.