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SpaceLogo Sciences Participating with Arts & Culture in Education

By Kelly Perlman November 17, 2013

Hearing Green

You are walking and arrive at the address number 28. The color chartreuse green comes to mind. You step into your room and you see the calendar on the wall. A giant three-dimensional cube appears in your head. Finally, you put in your earphones and you listen to your favorite song. You start to taste lemons. Then you start tasting rich, sweet chocolate.

You may have never experienced the situation described above, but people with the condition called synesthesia have. Synesthesia is a hereditary, involuntary interaction between different senses. The senses are not distinct in synesthetes. For some people, sound and vision can be associated. So, when they, for example, hear a sound, they may also see a letter.  This is just one type of synesthesia but there are numerous forms. (Ramachadran, Ted Talk)

What causes synesthesia? The general consensus among scientists is that it results from excess cross wiring of certain regions in the brain. The brain is naturally wired so that some parts connect and not others. When there is accidental cross wiring of say, the number and color region, synesthesia occurs. This makes sense, as the number and color area are right next to each other in the Fusiform Gyrus, which is a part of the brain. Since they are next to each other, accidental cross wiring is most likely more common. (Ramachandran, Ted Talk)

How might accidental cross wiring occur? To give us a clue on how this happens, we can look to the concept of the development of the brain.  According to science author Ann MacDonald:

The brain adds comparatively few cells after birth. Instead, the existing neurons grow larger and more powerful... [and] by the time your child turns 3, each neuron has formed as many as 10,000 connections, making a total of about a quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) throughout the brain. (That’s double the number of connections in your own brain.) -MacDonald

Now, how does the brain choose which connections are important? Since there are so many connections some of them must be removed.

But the first few years of life are a time of selection. The neural networks that are used grow stronger. Those that are not wither away, just as unused brain cells started dying in the last weeks before birth. This process is known as pruning. The death and removal of excess brain cells and connections truly sculpts a person’s brain. Until your baby is 3, growth far outpaces pruning. From then until the age of 10, the formation of new connections is balanced by the elimination of unused ones. When your child reaches puberty, the balance finally shifts and the pruning of connections exceeds the formation of new ones. (MacDonald)

So babies have all sorts of wiring when they are young, and as time goes on these connections wither away. It is very plausible that in individuals with synesthesia, pruning did not occur because of a mutated gene. (Ramachandran). Therefore, they may still have some of their infantile wiring. Since there is an abundance of cross wiring in babies, some scientists believe that they must have synesthesia and there have been some experiments and research trying to prove it.

How common is synesthesia? Scientists are not entirely sure but neuroscientist and director of the center for brain and cognition at the University of California, V.S. Ramachandran, has pointed out one of the most shocking facts about synesthesia: that it is approximately 8 times more common in artists such as poets, novelists and painters. He has an incredible hypothesis for why this is. Think about it: artists have a way of intertwining all of our distinct senses. They twist and connect images, language, and metaphorical meanings and find a way to put the abstract into a concrete form. This kind of thought process gives insight into their brains. Since thoughts and senses flow and interconnect so fluidly in artists, it makes sense that they could have some excess cross wiring between the senses in their brains. These traits and characteristics of artists reveal that they are more prone to synesthesia, due to their patterns of thought and the depth and diversity of their creations.

Now consider the fact that the Angular Gyrus is eight times bigger in the humans than in lower primates. This area of the brain is “the crossroads between hearing, vision and touch” (Ramachandran). The fact that it is so much bigger in humans has a special significance, Ramachadran postulates. With a bigger surface area for the interaction of these senses, there is a greater possibility of having accidental cross wiring. If these areas become cross-wired, these senses become intermingled. He suggests that it is possible that all humans have some degree of cross wiring and this gives rise to one of humanity’s most unique and treasured attributes: creativity.

Just think about it. Our creativity can possibly be a result of accidental cross wiring in the brain. A flaw in the brain’s natural wiring system could have led to all of the most cherished and valued pieces of art created. Consider Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Picasso, Degas, Monet, Shakespeare, Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, and those are just some creative people that come to mind. Every single person has a their own variation of inventiveness and imagination and each person’s traits help to shape the creativity of the human race.

What we humans have done with this gift is utterly astonishing. One could very strongly argue that creativity is what separates us from lower primates. One could argue even more strongly that without our creativity, civilization itself wouldn’t exist. Humanity would not even resemble what it does today without this exceptional trait. In fact, one might not even consider humans to be humans without their creativity. Luckily, some accidents are meant to be.

You can watch Ramachandran’s amazing Ted Talk here

Works Cited

MacDonald, Ann. "Brain Development in Childhood — The Dana Guide." The Dana Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2013.<https://www.dana.org/news/brainhealth/detail.aspx?id=10054>.

Ramachandran, V.S., and E.M. Hubbard. "Synaesthesia — A Window Into Perception, Thought and

     Language." The Chinese University of Hong Kong. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2013. <http://ww2.psy.cuhk.edu.hk/~mael/papers/RamachandranHubbard_Synaesthesia.pdf>.

VS Ramachandran: 3 Clues to Understanding Your Brain. TED. TED, n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2013. <http://www.ted.com/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind.html>.

About the author

Kelly Perlman studies Health Science at Dawson College. She enjoys tennis, skating with her friends, neuroscience, chocolate and Dr. Sheldon Cooper. 

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Andrew, Jiri, Lias and Serena for helping to edit this article. I really appreciate it!

The image “The Sea of Synesthesia” is by garlandcannon, under CC BY-SA 2.0

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    SaraC

    November 20, 2013

    This article is amazing! It has obviously been very well researched and opinionated. You show us a reality that might not be altogether known in the world. What better way to show the literal depiction of what a “collision” is than describe the senses in the human body? Very well done and I encourage you to continue writing! 😊

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    dawsonmike

    December 3, 2013

    Great story, very interesting concept. i would like to know more on this topic.

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    dawsonmike

    December 3, 2013

    I also forgot to add that this kind of information is very interesting to me, as it is linked with many of the work that I am doing in school. It is well put together with great sources and detailed research. Hopefully other interesting concepts regard this topic and that of imagination and creativity are brought to light shared upon in the future by this author or other aspiring writers.

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    Clara

    December 5, 2013

    This article is very interesting and well researched. It’s something I would never think of and I like how you show us a connection between creativity from synesthesia and poets or painters or writers and it actually makes sense because I a lot of artist can express or connect to what they have in mind through art work when the viewers don’t truly understand what the artist is trying to show us. Also, not a lot of research is made about this and I would like to hear more about synesthesia. I encourage you to keep on forming theories and to make more researches about other interesting topics.

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    Vicki Kelly

    December 5, 2013

    This is an amazing article. It was very informative and very interesting. How did you even hear of this topic? You did your research well and did a very good job of presenting the topic in a way that makes it understandable for the average human being. I find it fascinating how it all connected to creativity in the end,it was a good note to end the piece on. I study Health Science too, so this is exactly the kind of thing that fascinates me. Human being are awesome. Keep writing, keep learning, and feel free to keep sharing your findings.

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    Bronwyn Haney

    December 6, 2013

    Although I’m not studying it, psychology has always been fascinating to me. I took it as an option in high school, and I did a project on the topic of synesthesia myself. It’s truly amazing what our brains are capable of doing! I always thought that syesthesia was the coolest thing you could have, especially if it is perceptual synesthesia rather that conceptual synethesia, as it must be pure magic to be able to see/taste/smell in response to something else you experience. It must be like living in an abstract painting, and the people who have synesthesia tend to be great artists. A contemporary example of this is Marina Diamandis of Marina and the Diamonds, who has perceptual synesthesia. She (in my opinion at least) always composes the best music with profound messages that have never been seen before. I really enjoyed this article, it really made my day!

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