SYNESTHESIA: TYPE OF BRAIN DISORDER
The person who always see the colour blue when hearing a specific tune, who see the colour red always on letter ‘B’, or someone’s voice produce a colourful pattern in mind. The positive answer to all the above symptoms means the disorder called synesthesia. People with this disorder perceive the world in a mixture of sense. This is not a special sense but a disorder caused by mis-wiring of brain circuits that cause distortion in a synesthete’s perception.
Different brain regions control the sensory systems, and within these areas there are sub-areas that are responsible for the specific sub-function. For example, in the visual area in the brain there are sub-regions that take care of colour perception movement or recognizing faces. There is a distinct division of labour when it comes to decoding signals from the sense organs. These sub-regions work together to produce a final seamless visual image in our mind. So when there is an injury or death of cells in these specific areas, people suffers very specific losses of function. When the area responsible for colour perception is affected then the person see the world in black and white; when the area responsible for motion perception is affected, the person see the world as the series of static images and can’t perceive movement.
In people with synesthesia, the information from one sensory modality gets mixed up with another. For example, when a person hears the sound it will produce the perception of taste in their mind. There are many variations within one modality also. In the visual system itself, a person can intermingle information about shapes/forms and colour/texture. There are varying degrees in which the synesthete can perceive these mis-pairing.
They can also associate letter or word with just a colour or they might perceive it as a complex visual pattern. So there are many kinds of synesthesia with almost all possible combination of sensory information pairs.
Normal peoples might be confused to find themselves experiencing such a condition. But synesthesia leads a normal life partly because this is a disorder that one is born with, so they have never lived in the so called normal world.
Thanks to Abhilasha for posting this Blog
The person who always see the colour blue when hearing a specific tune, who see the colour red always on letter ‘B’, or someone’s voice produce a colourful pattern in mind. The positive answer to all the above symptoms means the disorder called synesthesia. People with this disorder perceive the world in a mixture of sense. This is not a special sense but a disorder caused by mis-wiring of brain circuits that cause distortion in a synesthete’s perception.
Different brain regions control the sensory systems, and within these areas there are sub-areas that are responsible for the specific sub-function. For example, in the visual area in the brain there are sub-regions that take care of colour perception movement or recognizing faces. There is a distinct division of labour when it comes to decoding signals from the sense organs. These sub-regions work together to produce a final seamless visual image in our mind. So when there is an injury or death of cells in these specific areas, people suffers very specific losses of function. When the area responsible for colour perception is affected then the person see the world in black and white; when the area responsible for motion perception is affected, the person see the world as the series of static images and can’t perceive movement.
In people with synesthesia, the information from one sensory modality gets mixed up with another. For example, when a person hears the sound it will produce the perception of taste in their mind. There are many variations within one modality also. In the visual system itself, a person can intermingle information about shapes/forms and colour/texture. There are varying degrees in which the synesthete can perceive these mis-pairing.
They can also associate letter or word with just a colour or they might perceive it as a complex visual pattern. So there are many kinds of synesthesia with almost all possible combination of sensory information pairs.
Normal peoples might be confused to find themselves experiencing such a condition. But synesthesia leads a normal life partly because this is a disorder that one is born with, so they have never lived in the so called normal world.
Thanks to Abhilasha for posting this Blog
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