All In The Mind

If you're born with Synaesthesia your sensory world is an extraordinary one.
Colours accompany sounds, or flavours come with words - it's a curious
cross-wiring of the five senses. In the final of a two part of this BBC series,
more compelling stories from 'synaesthetes' and experts alike. Synaesthesia is
changing science's understanding of perception and neuroscience, and this
episode considers that we might have all been born with this surreal
condition...

Transcript

Transcripts are not available of this BBC Radio 4 series for copyright reasons. For more links and references see below

We all wonder at some point whether other people experience their surroundings in the same way we do. Do they hear the same things and see the same colours?

People with synaesthesia really do experience the world differently. New scientific research shows that the condition can take a variety of forms. Some see colours and patterns when they hear music or words. Others 'taste' words.

People with the most common form of synaesthesia - or 'syn' as they sometimes refer to it - perceive words, letters and numbers as distinct colours. Most synaesthetes find their condition enriching. But for others, it can be unsettling - sounds produce uncomfortable colours, words provoke odd tastes.

For neuroscientists, modern technology is at last making it possible to study synaesthesia, and revealing in the process a great deal about how the brain processes sensory information in all of us.

In this second program BBC journalist Georgina Ferry and producer Amanda Hargreaves examine the mounting evidence that we all start life with the potential for synaesthesia. The sensory pathways are ill-defined in infants, and it is only later in a child's development that the senses are parcelled out.

Scientists are coming to the realisation that we may all have the capacity for vestigial synaesthesia, even if our sensory pathways have been separated out as normal. They are finding evidence for this through the experiences of synaesthetes such as teacher and translator Patricia Duffy who sees coloured letters and numbers and believes that synaesthesia can be harnessed as a memory aid.

Results from drug tests show that a synaesthetic experience can actually be manufactured with the help of artificial stimulants. In some of us, head trauma or blindness can trigger synaesthetic experiences. Certainly, there is now evidence that in all of us, the same parts of the brain are stimulated by seeing something and by thinking about it. The study of synaesthesia is providing a combination of results that is pushing the boundaries of neuroscience.

Evidence from the most recent research is being used to illuminate the acquisition and processing of language, and may also give answers to one of the biggest questions of all - the nature of meaning as it is represented in the human brain.

Program outline sourced from http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/hearingcolours.shtml

Guests

Dr John Harrison
Neuropsychologist

James Wannerton
James Wannerton is a "gustatory/auditory" synaesthete which means he tastes words or word sounds, and he contributed to this BBC Radio 4 Series through his involvement in the work of Dr Jamie Ward at University College London. He is interested in locating other people with his particular type of synaesthesia. Contact him via his website. http://www.wannerton.net/
http://www.jwannerton.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/contact.htm

Emma Jones
synaesthete

Joseph Long
pianist and synaesthete

Professor Jeffrey Gray
Emeritus Professor of Psychology The Institute of Psychiatry Kings College, London Jeffrey Gray's website

Dr Richard E. Cytowic
Cytowic's website

Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition and professor with the Psychology Department and the Neurosciences Program at the University of California, San Diego Vilayanur S. Ramachandran's website

Further Information

BBC website for this series, 'Hearing Colours Seeing Sounds'

Further information about this series from BBC Radio 4
Includes an extensive list of relevant links

I Can See Sounds
A news article from the BBC about artist Jane Mackay, who has synaesthesia.

International Synaesthesia Association

American Synaesthesia Association

Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens
A website with oodles of information from the author of the book with the same title. Includes links to research papers and articles about synaesthesia.

Publications

Title: Synesthesia: Phenomenology And Neuropsychology
Publisher: Psyche: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research into Consciousness, 2 (10), July 1995
URL: http://psyche.csse.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-10-cytowic.html
A 1995 article, so probably out of date now - but written by one of the big names in the field.

Title: Synaesthesia: The Strangest Thing
Author : John Harrison
Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2001
ISBN: 0-19-263245-0

Title: The Man Who Tasted Shapes
Author : Richard E Cytowic
Publisher: The MIT Press (A Bradford Book), 1998
ISBN 0-262-53152-6

Title: Is There a Normal Phase of Synaesthesia in Development?
Author : Simon Baron-Cohen
Publisher: Psyche: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Consciousness, 2(27), June 1996
URL: http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-27-baron_cohen.html