Most of the population doesn’t get a certain taste in their mouth when we hear a certain music note and we don’t see certain letters in colors. But for people with forms of synaesthesia, they experience many of these mixing of senses. Typically synaesthesia starts in early childhood and is consistent as the person ages. It is known that the experiences occur with no conscious effort. There are two common forms of synaesthesia, color–graphemic synaesthesia, where specific numbers and letters or words, written and/or spoken, provoking a reaction to seeing different colors. And the second being, color–phonemic synaesthesia, the spoken form. There are reports that state that there are many types of inducers (the stimulus that triggers the synaesthetic experience) and concurrent (the synaesthetic experience itself).
The occurrence of synaesthesia in the adult population has been estimated between 1 in 2,000 and 1 in 25,000. There has been evidence that women are more likely to have it, with around six times more females than males. Findings state there can be a genetic predisposition transmitted by an X-linked autosomal dominant gene. Through the more recent studies of synaesthesia they have researched a possible biological cause instead of damage to the brain. One of the propositions is the connectivity between brain areas that help to further the relevant sensory modalities. For example, color-phonemic synaesthesia might result from additional synaptic connections between brain regions that are responsible for processing auditory inputs and those involved in color perception.
Another researcher has stated that instead of there being additional connections, the synaesthesia might be a result from disinhibited feedback in neural pat...
... middle of paper ...
...ce for increased activity in visual areas or the fusiform gyrus, which is connected with color perception. These results have shown that spoken words result in co-activation of color processing areas, but not visual areas connected with the perceptual process of color. Sadly, the conclusions don’t reveal which perceptual or cognitive processes might cause the difference with people with synaesthesia and the controls.
Further research of the Paulesu study reveals activity observed in the synaesthetes resembles what was found in studies of color imagery of that in non-synaesthetes. They asked their synaesthetes, but not the controls, to let the color perception occur automatically. This would let them observe the neural correlates of color imagery instead of the synaesthesia. On the other hand, they might suggest that synaesthesia itself is similar to color imagery.
The two types of aphasia discussed in class is non-fluent aphasia and fluent aphasia. Aphasia can occur when there is damage to the left hemisphere of the brain, which is the language center of the brain. People with non-fluent aphasia will say or sign random words, there will be little or no function words/signs, similar to the telegraphic stage of language development. People with fluent aphasia will be able to produce sentences with function words, but the sentences will contain miss-selected words/signs.
The original thought experiment did not mention that science has advanced far enough to be able to explain the qualia of colour. Nor did it mention that Mary is able to imagine what it is like to experience colour vision. So, the knowledge argument argues that even though Mary does know all of the facts of colour vision; because, Mary does not know the experience of colour, physicalism must be false (pg. 35). However, this argument is flawed because it seems to be based off of ignorance (pg. 36). It is possible for Mary to have never seen red, but still know what it would look like (pg. 36). My argument is that if physicalism is more likely to be able to explain the qualia of colour than property dualism, then physicalism must be possible and more plausible than property dualism. If physicalism is possible, then someone like Mary could possibly exist in the future and know everything about colour vision, including the qualia of colour, without directly experiencing it (pg. 35). Someone like Mary in the future could possibly know everything about colour vision (pg. 36). Therefore, physicalism could possibly be true. If the
In Beau Lotto’s Ted Talk “Optical Illusions Show How We See” we could appreciate how our perception can vary based on the context. He explained the importance that color has in our lives and all of the factors that can alter how we perceive a color, such as illumination. Lotto showed how the light that comes through our eyes could mean anything, however it is our brain’s job to give meaning to that information by using patterns, associations, knowledge from past experiences, etc.
...ffect. This theory suggests that recognizing and naming colors is not an “automatic process”. The attention need to be shifted from word to recognition of color; and there is hesitancy to respond; whereas, reading a word is habitual. The brain automatically understands the meaning and the phonetics of the word. The habituation of the reading task does not require controlled attention. Hence it is easier to read a word than to recognize the color of the word. More than theorizing on the phenomenon of Stroop effect, there is application value to this study. The experimental data and observations in the current study are very vital that it can be applied in many situations where the correctness is important than the speed. This information has the widest application in selection of individuals in occupations requiring instance data processing and correct responses.
Aphasia is an acquired communication disorder that disrupts communication and it can deteriorate a person’s coping potential and quality of life (Parr, 2001) which involve damage to the parts of brain that contain language (ASHA, 2013). Statistics from United States indicated around 25-40% of stroke survivors developed aphasia (National Association of Aphasia, NAA, 2013). Aphasia will affect both the ability to produce or comprehend spoken language and written language while intelligence is left intact (NAA, 2013). In US, it is found that the most common cause of aphasia is stroke (85%) and others including Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), brain tumor or other degenerative diseases (NAA, 2013).
Kanske, P., Heissler, J., Schönfelder, S., Forneck, J., & Wessa, M. (2013). Neural correlates of
Imagine a world where numbers, letters, tastes, and sounds have color. Imagine a world where letters and numbers have personalities. For a synesthete, this is their world. Synesthesia occurs from a cross wiring in the brain. Instead of one sense being used in a particular action, multiple senses are used. Although little medical knowledge is known about the condition, it is fascinating and continues to impact our world.
Sounds automatically produce conscious visual and auditory experiences in auditory-visual synesthesia. Direct auditory-visual percepts may play a functional role in multisensory processing, which may give rise to synesthesia-like illusion or illusory flash. The illusion occurs predominantly in peripheral vision, and is accompanied by electrical activity over occipital sites (Oz, O1, and O2) (Shams et al., 2001). The cross-modal transfer hypothesis assumes that connections between auditory and visual regions are indirect and are mediated by multisensory audiovisual brain regions (Goller et al., 2009). Multisensory processes may be activated when two senses are stimulated or by a unimodal stimulus such as synesthesia (Goller et al., 2009). This
The brain contains millions of tiny nerve cells, known as neurons and these neurons are joined and connected to a million more neurons. When these neurons form a series of interconnected neuron...
Imagine yourself in an art museum. You wander slowly from cold room to cold room, analyzing colored canvases on stark white walls. When you reach a particular work, do you prefer to stand back and take everything in at once? Or do you move so close to the painting that the individual brushstrokes become apparent? Several different sensory processes occur in your brain during this trip to the art museum; the majority of them involve visual inputs. How does your brain put together all the information that your eyes receive? This raises questions ranging from depth of field to color. The ideas of color perception and color theory are interesting ones. How do humans account for color and does it truly exist? I think that by examining not only the neurological on-goings in the brain, but by learning about color through philosophy, and even art, a greater understanding of it can be reached.
Flowers would show a color word like “yellow” and “blue” on a colored background. There was a pause with a blank screen, then the subjects were shown a two different colors that were half and half on the page, like yellow or blue. The subjects then had to indicate which color word initially was presented to them. “He did not investigate the influence of this paradigm on normal Stroop interference, however, and his task differs from traditional tasks in having a delayed, binary response”
The parasympathetic is controlled by the cranial part of the brain, that is the vagus nerve and the sacral nerves arising from the spinal cord where the nerve fibers are distributed all over the body. The parasympathetic innervation for the activity of the thoracic cavity is decreased with connected glands and organs in the abdomen. The sacral component control or mediates the activity of the colon, bladder and the rectum. The parasympathetic nervous system has no connection with blood vessels except with brain and genitals. But they cause the stimulation to release neurotransmitter nitric oxide from blood vessels. The parasympathetic nervous system decreases the heart rate and blood pressure by vasodilation.
The Principles of Psychology. Toronto, Ontario: York University. L. R. Hochberg, M. D. (2006). Neuronal ensemble control of prosthetic devices in a human with tetraplegia. Nature, 164-71.
With each of our senses (sight, smell, touch, taste, and hear), information is transmitted to the brain. Psychologists find it problematic to explain the processes in which the physical energy that is received by the sense organs can form the foundation of perceptual experience. Perception is not a direct mirroring of stimulus, but a compound messy pattern dependent on the simultaneous activity of neurons. Sensory inputs are somehow converted into perceptions of laptops, music, flowers, food, and cars; into sights, sounds, smells, taste ...
Paintings, like many forms of art, are very subjective—what one may find intriguing another may completely disagree. “Art is physical material that affects a physical eye and conscious brain” (Solso, 13). To glance at art, we must go through a process of interpretation in order to understand what it is we are looking at. Solso describes the neurological, perceptual, and cognitive sequence that occurs when we view art, and the often inexpressible effect that a work of art has on us. He shows that there are two aspects to viewing art: nativistic perception—the synchronicity of eye and brain that transforms electromagnetic energy into neuro-chemical codes—which is "hard-wired" into the sensory-cognitive system; and directed perception, which incorporates personal history—the entire set of our expectations and past experiences—and knowledge (Solso, preface)