God is organic. Yes. And the man?
And the person must be limited.
© I. A. Brodsky
It has been established that the human brain is able to perceive information about the world around it with the help of six main senses. We see, hear, taste, smell, feel with our skin and can keep balance by “adjusting” the position of the body in space. Our ears can't see, our skin doesn't smell. However, this does not mean that the senses are completely independent from each other.
Partial replacement
Despite the seeming "autonomy", the perception of each sense organ is closely interconnected with the rest. This allows us to get a more complete picture of the world around us, like a puzzle, in which all the details, separately representing a riddle with an incomprehensible result, are in their places.
All the more interesting is the work of the senses in a situation when one of them, for some reason, is not able to provide a full analysis of the environment, and the transmission of this information to the brain. At such moments, the "musketeer mode" turns on, when one for all, and all for one. The functions of a flabby organ are redistributed to the rest, but this does not mean that the blind will begin to see with their ears, and the deaf will hear with their nose. It is well known that the former have better developed tactile sensations and hearing, while the latter perfectly read lips and gesticulate, developing motor skills several times better than an ordinary person. However, there are exceptions to every rule - for example, synesthesia.
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Alternative feeling
Traditional dictionary excerpt:
It does not apply to any pathologies, quite the opposite - it pretty much helps a person who, by the will of fate, has lost one of the senses. This is an incredibly interesting phenomenon, but its study is abandoned - there are too few of those who have manifested synesthesia, and who have managed to be lured into research mazes. It is believed to be present in every person and most pronounced in infants. In adults, too, but at about six months of age there is already a complete “separation” of the sense organs, and it becomes problematic to catch these sensations. Some researchers dubbed this process the death of neurons responsible for the preservation of synesthetic connections. Those with synesthesia still have these neurons.
They arise associatively. A simple example is color perception. In many countries, the “official” color of mourning is black, and therefore involuntarily felt by the average European as something gloomy and oppressive. And in the East, white is perceived in the same way - it is he who is associated there with the mourning atmosphere.
If synesthesia is not very pronounced, then this contributes to better memorization of information: the associative impression is “duplicated” on several organs of perception at once. It would be appropriate here to give an anecdotal situation with a man who decided to remember the number of his carriage in an unusual way: “1492, the year of the discovery of America … I will definitely not forget!”, And then ran around the station and asked passers-by if they knew when America was discovered …
Congenital synesthesia is another matter. First, an association arises, a primary synesthetic image, and only then a general impression received through the main senses. This ability was possessed by Solomon Shereshevsky, a professional mnemonist.
He had a phenomenal ability to memorize rows of words, tables of numbers, long meaningless formulas, phrases in an unfamiliar language. In most cases, he could unmistakably recall the same series of words, formulas, phrases after a few years. The limits of his memory in terms of volume and duration were not traced. Shereshevsky's memory was built primarily on spontaneous synesthetic associations. Words for him were images with the addition of various taste, visual and tactile sensations.
Shereshevsky's synesthesia was so strong that associations sometimes crowded out the basic feeling. He himself recalled it this way:
I go to the ice cream saleswoman and ask what varieties she has. "Everything is complete!" she replies in such a tone that a whole heap of coals and ash flies out of her mouth. People's voices are bouquets of flowers, puffs of smoke or fog. I am so fond of looking at voices that sometimes I cannot understand what they are talking to me about.
The memory of "ordinary" synesthetes, despite its apparent phenomenality, is easily influenced by chaos. If you change the usual objects in places, then this will bring confusion to their minds, therefore, for the most part, they are scrupulous people with respect to order.
The combination of the incongruous
Among the many varieties of synesthesia, chromaesthesia stands out, it is also acoustic-color synesthesia, or simply - color hearing. Synesthetes with this ability, hearing a sound, as a “bonus” perceive it not only as an ordinary sound sensation - a color sensation is added to it. Modern musicians, owners of color hearing, say that this is a poorly controlled and rather unpleasant phenomenon - too much noise surrounds us.
Many have tried to draw a spectrum-octave analogy. The history of light music stretches back about 1650, when the first theories about this appeared. They were very popular in the 17th-19th centuries, and were conditionally divided into two options:
- color music - the scale is accompanied by a certain color sequence;
- music of color - complete absence of music, replacement of sounds with a spectrum corresponding to the octave.
At first it was believed that a certain color corresponds to each note, but this is not the case with synesthetes - everything is purely individual. But is this a good enough reason not to try to reconcile the incompatible? An example of this is the “light symphony” in “Prometheus” by A. N. Scriabin. His score contains the line “Luce” (“Light”), written in the usual notes for an unusual instrument - a light clavier, but there is no specific indication of the correspondence of notes and colors. This did not prevent the staging of "Prometheus" with light accompaniment, starting from 1915.
One of the main problems of early light music was the idea that the idea was ahead of technical progress. The composition is there - there is nothing to perform. Of course, there were tests, and a lot, but nevertheless, the process of staging a light-musical work was often beyond the power of ordinary musicians. Therefore, the next round in this direction took place in the 70s of the last century: it can be described in two words, “Equipment to the masses!”. This was facilitated by the development and cheapening of electronics, its universal distribution, and the use of high-quality lighting equipment at concerts. At the same time, rather primitive, but still performing their direct function, “home” light and music installations appeared, studies of the effect of color music on cosmonauts were carried out. A decade later, many schools of color music appear throughout Europe.
It has been established that any musical effect can be enhanced with the help of color. This principle is applied in discos, and even in cinemas - a film of a modern format is often enhanced not only by color, but also by other influences - vestibular, tactile and olfactory.
Oversensibility
Colored hearing is the most common manifestation of synesthesia, but that doesn't mean there aren't others. So, the patient of Dr. Richard Saitovich was a 12-year-old boy who took different positions depending on what word was said to him. The child was convinced: each word contains a specific movement, and he simply shows which one. This phenomenon has been called audiomotor synesthesia. The doctor repeated the experiment: a few years later, he found an already matured patient and, without warning, said a few words to him. The young man repeated the same movements as in childhood - the synesthetic perception remained the same.
Many synesthetes “see” the colors of letters and numbers. Even more distinguishes the “color” of the sound. Sight and hearing more often than other organs of perception figure in the "case of synesthetes", but there is also a tactile-gustatory combination, and a figurative one - to look at an object and feel what it feels like.
It is impossible to calculate exactly how many types synesthesia includes. Yes, it is based on the usual organs of perception, but there are much more reactions - synesthetes rarely has only one.
Synesthesia and the world around you
Attempts to explain the synesthetic perception of the world from the point of view of the usual rationalism and logic only strengthen the wall between the owner of unusual abilities and the outside world. The very existence of synesthesia is direct proof that reality cannot be the same for everyone. But, unfortunately, what the majority is not capable of realizing is rejected as having no right to life. Society is too obsessed with rationalism and relies on only six basic senses. Do the synesthetes really need them? Maybe for him this is just a symbol of obtaining information about the world around him, and not his tool?