Honours Programme - Research Diary

Robin and Lisa’s research diary Honours Programme Substance control

drug abuse

exploring tangible things

SUBSTANCE

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music synesthesia

prosopagnosia

colour

imagination

dreams / hallucinations

visualisation

CONTROL

your mind and trauma

Aphantasia

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Synesthesia Synesthesia is a neurological condition in which information meant to stimulate one of your senses stimulates several of your senses. Synesthetes can often “see” music as colors when they hear it, and “taste” textures like “round” or “pointy” when they eat foods.

Aphantasia A medical condition in which a person is not able to form an image in their mind of things or people that are not actually present.

Prosopagnosia (face blindness) A cognitive disorder of face perception in which the ability to recognize familiar faces, including one’s own face (self-recognition), is impaired.

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It is also possibly for some people with forms of aphantasia to have no inner monologue.

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Aphantasia is a very new condition which was discovered in the 1800 but neglected till the early 2000s. It remained largely unstudied until 2005, when Professor Adam Zeman of the University of Exeter was approached by patient MX, a man who seemed to have lost the ability to visualize after undergoing minor surgery. Following the publication of this case, a number of people came forward saying they experience similar things even since birth.

Specialists think there is about 1% of the population who actually has aphantasia.

People with aphantasia often feel their lives are made up of solid facts and entirely knowledge based, they can still create concepts in their minds but without a visual cue or memory to go along with it.

In some cases, before diagnosis, people believed they had psychopathic or sociopathic tendencies as they struggled handling relationships. More so, the way of dealing with trauma or loss is different for them.

Having aphantasia has its advantages and disadvantages. Some people feel like they can be more present and less likely to regret or dwell on the past which is also a key factor when developing something like PTSD.

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People with aphantasia have weaker connections between their occipital lobe and frontol lobe which stops them from making pictoral memories

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How come synesthesia exists?

Synesthesia can be already there when you are born, or you develop it at a later age. Synesthesia is proven to be inherited genetically. With people who experience synesthesia, the brain activates not one area of the brain. For example, a synesthete will eat a carrot. While eating, the gustatory cortex (the part of the brain which takes care of the perception of taste), but also the occipital lobe (responsible for vision) which activates that the synesthete sees the colour blue.

There are about 80 types of synesthesia.

There are two overall forms of synesthesia: projective synesthesia: people who see colours, forms, or shapes when stimulated (the widely understood version of synesthesia). associative synesthesia: people who feel a very strong and involuntary connection between the stimulus and the sense that it triggers.

-Grapheme–colour synesthesia = one of the most common forms of synesthesia. Individual letters of the alphabet and numbers are “shaded” or “tinged” with a colour.

-Chromesthesia or sound-to-colour synesthesia -Spatial sequence synesthesia = Those with spatial sequence synesthesia tend to see numerical sequences as points in space.

-Number form = A number form is a mental map of numbers that automatically and involuntarily appear whenever someone who experiences number-forms synesthesia thinks of numbers.

-Auditory–tactile synesthesia = certain sounds can induce sensations in parts of the body -Ordinal-linguistic personification = is a form of synesthesia in which ordered sequences, such as ordinal numbers, week-day names, months, and alphabetical letters are associated with personalities or genders.

-Mirror-touch synesthesia = This is a form of synesthesia where individuals feel the same sensation that another person feels (such as touch) -Misophonia = a neurological disorder in which negative experiences (anger, hatred, disgust) are triggered by specific sounds -Lexical–gustatory synesthesia = This is another form of synesthesia where certain tastes are experienced when hearing words.

These are some examples of synesthesia. There are many more.

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9 The Orchid and The Nettle by Julia Hamilton

The Kiki/Bouba effect is a result of an experiment originated by German-American psychologist Wolfgang Köhler. The test was to see if linguistics are connected to certain shapes. The test results showed that the word Kiki is connected to a pointy shape and Bouba to a round shape. This is because the word kiki, or any other words with characters like p, t, and k, are making the vocal cords vibrate when they are spoken out loud, and this creates a sharper tone. With words like bouba, or other words with b, g, and d in it, this is the other way around, the vocal cords are not vibrating like with a word like kiki which makes the sound softer.

This effect is also applicable on faces, for example. When hearing a name like Bob, the first thought for many, is of a rounder face. On the other hand, a name like Tim is more likely to be associated with sharper features.

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Bob

Tim

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We decided to conduct a research to find out if people around us had synesthetic characteristics. On instagram we created a poll to reach as many people as we could and asking them the following questions: What colour do you associate with a square?

Do you associate the taste of chocolate with a linear or organic form?

What day of the week do you associate with blue?

What day of the week do you associate with yellow?

What day of the week do you associate with red?

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Many people associated the square with the colour white, this is probably because we chose to use a picture of a black square on a white background, so automatically their minds drifted to the most obvious answers.

For others, the colours were varied, which could be to do with their own experiences, their environment or simply their favourite colour.

Here most people choose organic, probably because the texture of chocolate is melty therefore seen as ‘flowy’ and the flavour is associated with comfort and creamy. On the other hand, a few chose linear, maybe because of the photo we chose, a chocolate BAR.

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29 people out of 85 associate the colour blue with Thursday. Overall the results were spread out quite a bit. This could do with upbringing, maybe a type of synesthesia or just if they like that day and that colour. Next time, we could continue to ask them why they associate that particular day and colour.

For red, something similar happened, the answers were spread but Monday came on top. Similarly to the Bouba/ Kiki effect, some people might associate the visual shape of the word with the speech sound that the word makes.

Finally, for yellow, Sunday and Wednesday were the top. We also felt very strongly about those days being associated with yellow. Robin felt like Wednesday and Sunday are warm names. The combination of letters makes her think of the sun. Lisa associates Sunday with relaxing and maybe doing so outside on a bright day more so Wednesday (being hump day) is a happy day therefore yellow is the most fitting colour.

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We decided to do a small synesthetic experiment by listening to songs and drawing whatever came from our brain when listening to sounds.

Synesthetic - Porno Fun https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqpMgAod5Yc

Lisa

This song is very upbeat and has different beatdrops, weboth captured the harshness of the sound but also the smoothness of the repetitive beat.

Robin

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Synesthesia - Full Album Experiential Instrumental Music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kH0TcbQ8s7w&t=447s This song was more calm and flowy, allowing us to use the pencil in a more free way. We have a very different way of expressing what we hear onto paper which is fascinating.

Robin

Lisa

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Prosopagnosia also known as face blindness is a cognitive disorder of face perception in which the face recognition part of the brain is impaired, making it impossible for people with face blindness to recognize strangers, their loved ones and even themselves.

It may seem surprising that people with prosopagnosia can form short-term memories and take in new information but are unable to recognize familiar faces. When first researching this condition, it was extremely perplexing trying to understand how people suffering from this condition could live their everyday life.

Consciously and unconsciously, people with prosopagnosia have developed different strategies to recognize people. Remembering their clothing style, hair and environment. This can get tricky when one of the strategies are challenged for example if that person changes their hair style.

Prosopagnosia is most definitely a spectrum, some have trained for years to live with this condition if they were born with it, but for others who may have suffered a traumatic injury, life can suddenly become impossible. Feeling depressed, anxious and scared of social interactions is very common. In some rare more serious cases, they might not even recognize or perceive certain facial expressions, the person’s age and gender and most seriously, having trouble recognizing objects and places.

The FFA (fusiform face are) is a region of the brain situated in the temporal lobe. Particular neurons in the temporal lobe respond to particular facial features. If this area of the brain is damaged, this will only impair the facial recognition aspect.

Chuck Close is an American artist, he paints, photographs and makes very large-scale realistic portraits. He also suffers from severe face blindness. He uses his art of portrait making to try and remember the faces of those who mean something to him. Instead of starting with particular features such as the face shape or the eyes, Chuck works with a photograph with a grid on it and translates what he sees square by square to his canvas. He has learned to go by process of elimination when trying to recognize somebody like a puzzle he pieces back together.

Scientists have tried to figure out how people with prosopagnosia see faces, the simplest way they have found is looking at somebody’s face upside down.

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Robin van Leijsen and Lisa Colombo