Synesthesia: the number of people with supernormal abilities is growing in the world

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Strenuous intellectual activity can lead to the fusion of perception from several senses. Scientists call this synesthesia. Why are there more synesthetics?

Unified perception

In 1905, Russian biophysicist, academician Pyotr Lazarev began to study the mechanisms of human perception of the external world. He wrote an article about this "On the mutual influence of the organs of sight and hearing", published several books.

“He showed that synesthesia, when two receptor systems merge, is not a bluff, but a real fact. and Pathology , held in June at the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Biophysics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Despite his great merits, in 1937 Academician Lazarev was accused of pseudoscience and hounded in the press. However, research in this direction continued.

Feelings help memory

In 1968, the Soviet neuropsychologist Alexander Luria published the brochure "A Little Book of Great Memory". In particular, there he described the phenomenal abilities of the reporter, and later the professional mnemonist Solomon Shereshevsky.

The young man was sent to see a psychologist by his supervisor, editor. It turned out that the memory of Shereshevsky has no "clear boundaries." He reproduced the memorized series of words over the years.

He was diagnosed with extremely developed synesthesia - the fusion of information from two senses. The sounds of music, voices were colored in his mind with different colors. In total, Shereshevsky possessed several synesthesias, where flows from five senses were combined.

Observations of him allowed Luria to conclude that synesthesias contribute to a good retention of information in memory.

"What is synesthesia for? It destroys uncertainty," Heinrich Ivanitsky believes.

He gives the results of an experiment in his laboratory. From six fragments, it was required to assemble two whole figures: a square and a rectangle. Everyone coped with this task in a matter of minutes, without noticing that there were many build options. Painting the figures with different colors did not eliminate the ambiguity. And only the addition of one more feature - the drawing of a snake - made it possible to solve the problem correctly.

According to the professor, each new sign makes memorization easier. The mnemonic techniques are based on this. It also explains why synesthetics have a good memory.

Creativity and synesthesia

Synesthesia is the focus of scientists these days. For example, neuropsychologist Villanour Ramachandran in his book "The Brain Tells. What Makes Us Human" describes the perception of a synesthetic patient. He saw a colored halo around the face of each person. Alcohol intensified the sensations: the color became more intense and spread all over the face.

This patient was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a special form of autism that makes communication difficult. He could not intuitively read emotions, he had to draw conclusions about them based on the context. Moreover, each emotion had its own color.

There is no consensus on how synesthesia occurs. It can be inherited or result from the body's adaptation to environmental changes.

According to one hypothesis, synesthesia develops when a child gets acquainted with abstract concepts: letters, numbers.

“After the printing industry began producing color primers, the number of synesthetics increased. Letter A - watermelon. It is painted red. B - banana, painted yellow. Anyone who is genetically predisposed to fusion of receptor systems, paints letters in his head. Gradually, this becomes a permanent feature. Moreover, a person does not realize this, says Henrikh Ivanitsky.

No wonder the most common types of synesthesia are grapheme-color and digital-color.

"Previously, there were two percent of synesthetics among people, now there are twelve. It is not clear due to the fact that the methods of their recognition have improved, or indeed there are more such people," the professor argues.

In an article published in the latest issue of the journal Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk, he suggests that intellectual work and creativity contribute to an increase in the number of synesthetics.

The work of an artist, writer, composer, scientist requires associative thinking based on enumerating many connections between clusters of neurons. If the system of inhibition in the brain is insufficient, the unification of information flows can occur.

“For many creative people, with intense mental work, the receptor perceptions merge, which creates a bright world of new images in the virtual model of the brain,” he concludes.