I have a personal love for Science. I have never really understood why. Maybe it's a natural curiosity to explain the things around me? I'm not so sure. I am often drawn to the Science part of my local bookstore, sifting through Carl Sagan, theories on evolution and anything else that interests me.
This book was slightly hidden away, but as soon as I saw the title I was hooked - "The man who tasted shapes". Synaesthesia ("the neurological mixing of the senses. A synaesthete may, for example, hear colors, see sounds, and taste tactile sensations") has always interested me as it shows how incredible the human brain is.
I remember reading a thread on the internet where a person offered to draw what people's names looked like to him. I was astounded at the depth in colour, and how different his experience was to what non-synaesthetes experience.
The book initialy goes through a process of learning about synaesthesia and testing of two separate subjects of how the brain functions during their experience. Admiteddly, as I am not a Neurologist some of the terms went a little over my head, however the his conclusion was that the origins of synaesthesia are in the limbic system. However later theories do not corroborate this, the process undertaken intereseted me.
The tests performed were fully explained, and the one part that interested me was that when given certain substances it either enhanced or nearly totally removed the synaesthesia.
The second half of the book are essays in regards to Cytowic's thoughts on several subjects.
With broader thinking and a non-linear style of apporaching synaesthesia - I found this book very interesting, and was motivated to find out more! There are several famous performers with synaesthesia, such as Rollo from Faithless, Duke Ellington, Pharrel Williams, the bassist of the band Tool and several others. I would be incredibly interested to find out more about how this effects/enhances their creative process. Daniel Tammet, famous british autistic savant, also has synaesthesia.
With his conclusion of "synesthesia is actually a normal brain function in every one of us, but that its workings reach conscious awareness in only a handful" I became excited about the human experience and how we will find out more about how the brain works further in the future...
On an aside, I think it was interesting to view this book as a person who suffers Migraine Aura (unusual spots and also the inability to speak), while synaesthesia is unrelated, I still find anything on the human brain incredibly interesting - as we are still discovering the different ways that the brain can work!
Wiki Article on Synaesthesia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia
Cytowic's website: http://cytowic.net/_Books/_More-Shapes/_more-shapes.html
Amazon review: http://www.amazon.com/Man-Tasted-Shapes-Bradford-Books/dp/0262531526
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment