Synesthesia
1. Scientific American: Hearing Colors, Tasting Shapes
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=0003014B-9D06-1E8F-8EA5809EC5880000
2. Psychophysical Investigations into the Neural Basis of Synaesthesia [pdf]
http://psy.ucsd.edu/%7Eedhubbard/Reprint.PDF
3. Synethesia
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/syne.html
4. Everyday fantasia: The world of synesthesia
http://www.apa.org/monitor/mar01/synesthesia.html
5. Reith Lectures 2003: The Emerging Mind [RealOne Player]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003/reith2003_lecture4.shtml
6. Synesthesia and the Synesthetic Experience [pdf, QuickTime]
http://web.mit.edu/synesthesia/www/colordemo.html
7. Welcome to Synesthesia Interactive Music Visualization from I.V.!
http://home.alphastar.de/Vilen01/
8. Synaesthesia in the Arts
http://www.psychiatry.cam.ac.uk/isa/arts.html
As the "Scientific American_ article in the first Web site (1) asks: "When you eat chicken, does it feel pointy or round? Is a week shaped like a tipped-over D with the days arranged counterclockwise? Does the [musical] note B taste like horseradish? Do you get confused about appointments because Tuesday and Thursday have the same color?" For most people, the answer would be a resounding 'no,' but for a few, life without this integration of two or more senses would be unimaginable. The feature-length story from Scientific American, written by two scientists from the University of California-San Diego, offers an excellent resource for exploring the fascinating neurological condition known as synesthesia. The following site (2) contains a scientific paper on the neural basis for synesthesia, published by the same authors of the previous article. For a more general overview of synesthesia, check out this brief Web site from Neuroscience for Kids, an educational feature provided by Eric H. Chudler of the University of Washington (3). Similarly, the following Web site contains an article from the Monitor on Psychology offering a condensed introduction to synesthesia and a history of research in this area (4). The BBC Web site offers a full transcript and audio file of a recent lecture and Q&A session given by V. S. Ramachandran (again, one of the authors of the Scientific American pieces), as part of the Reith Lecture Series 2003 (5). The next Web site from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (6) offers interesting excerpts from a conversation between two synesthetes about their own unique versions of synesthesia. With the next site (7), non-synesthetes can experience something loosely similar to the real thing via a downloadable "real time interactive music-visualization program, which endeavours to use for intensification of music perception natural connection between acoustic and visual sensations," created by I. Vilenkin. Finally, synesthetes are well-represented in the arts, as evidenced by this Web site from the Department of Psychiatry at Cambridge University -- readers will find descriptions of some famous synesthetes, as well as examples of non-synesthetic artists, composers, and writers whose work embraces synesthetic expression (8). [RS]

[Back to Contents]