Imagine a world in which you see numbers and letters as colored even though they're printed in black, in which music or voices trigger a swirl of moving, colored shapes, in which words and names fill your mouth with unusual flavors. Jail tastes like cold, hard bacon while Derek tastes like earwax. Welcome to synesthesia, the neurological phenomenon that couples two or more senses in 4% of the population. A synesthete might not only hear my voice, but also see it, taste it, or feel it as a physical touch. Sharing the same root with anesthesia, meaning no sensation, synesthesia means joined sensation. Having one type, such as colored hearing, gives you a 50% chance of having a second, third, or fourth type. One in 90 among us experience graphemes, the written elements of language, like letters, numerals, and punctuation marks, as saturated with color. Some even have gender or personality. For Gail, 3 is athletic and sporty, 9 is a vain, elitist girl. By contrast, the sound units of language, or phonemes, trigger synestetic tastes. For James, college tastes like sausage, as does message and similar words with the -age ending. Synesthesia is a trait, like having blue eyes, rather than a disorder because there's nothing wrong. In fact, all the extra hooks endow synesthetes with superior memories. For example, a girl runs into someone she met long ago. "Let's see, she had a green name. D's are green: Debra, Darby, Dorothy, Denise. Yes! Her name is Denise!" Once established in childhood, pairings remain fixed for life. Synesthetes inherit a biological propensity for hyperconnecting brain neurons, but then must be exposed to cultural artifacts, such as calendars, food names, and alphabets. The amazing thing is that a single nucleotide change in the sequence of one's DNA alters perception. In this way, synesthesia provides a path to understanding subjective differences, how two people can see the same thing differently. Take Sean, who prefers blue tasting food, such as milk, oranges, and spinach. The gene heightens normally occurring connections between the taste area in his frontal lobe and the color area further back. But suppose in someone else that the gene acted in non-sensory areas. You would then have the ability to link seemingly unrelated things, which is the definition of metaphor, seeing the similar in the dissimilar. Not surprisingly, synesthesia is more common in artists who excel at making metaphors, like novelist Vladimir Nabokov, painter David Hockney, and composers Billy Joel and Lady Gaga. But why do the rest of us non-synesthetes understand metaphors like "sharp cheese" or "sweet person"? It so happens that sight, sound, and movement already map to one another so closely, that even bad ventriloquists convince us that the dummy is talking. Movies, likewise, can convince us that the sound is coming from the actors' mouths rather than surrounding speakers. So, inwardly, we're all synesthetes, outwardly unaware of the perceptual couplings happening all the time. Cross-talk in the brain is the rule, not the exception. And that sounds like a sweet deal to me!
想像这样一个世界 你从中看到的数字和字母是彩色的 尽管它们是用黑色写下的 这里的音乐或声响 会激起 由移动着的彩色色块组成的的漩涡 在这里 词语和名字会用 不寻常的味道填满你的嘴巴 “jail”尝起来像冰冷坚硬的培根 而“Derek”吃着像耳屎 欢迎来到联觉的世界 这种神经学现象 将4%的人的两种或以上的感觉连接在一起 一个有联觉者可能不仅会听到我的声音 还会看到 尝到 或者以物理接触的方式感知到 联觉和感觉缺失的来源相同 感觉缺失是指没有感觉 而联觉是指感觉被联通 拥有一种联觉 例如“色-听”联觉 你便有50%的可能拥有第二种 第三种 甚至第四种联觉 90个人中便有一个会感觉字素-- 构成语言的书面成分 例如字母 数字 还有标点符号 都是五彩缤纷的 有些甚至有性别或性格 对盖尔来说 3充满运动气息 9则是一个自负的精英女孩 与之相对 构成语言的声音部分 或者说声素 会联发味觉 对詹姆斯来说 "college"尝起来像香肠 "message"还有其他类似的 以"age"结尾的词也是一样的 联觉是人的一种特征 就像蓝眼睛一样 而不是一种紊乱 因为它并不代表什么毛病 事实上 所有这些额外的关联 赋予了有联觉者超凡的记忆力 举个例子 一个女孩遇见了一个她很久以前认识的人 ”让我看看 她有个绿色的名字 D开头的是绿色的 "Debra" "Darby" "Dorothy" "Denise" 没错! 她叫Denise! 一旦在儿时建立了联系 关联的感觉间的联系就会伴随终身 有联觉者遗传了在大脑神经元之间建立超连接 的生物倾向 但之后必须接触接触文化产品 例如日历 食物的名字 还有字母表 令人惊奇的是 在DNA序列中 一个核苷酸的变化 就可以改变一个人认知世界的方式 通过这种方式 联觉提供了一种途径 来研究主观认知的区别 两个人如何对同样的事物产生不同的认知 拿肖恩来说 他喜欢尝起来是蓝色的食物 像牛奶 橙子 还有菠菜 基因会增强额叶中的味觉区 和较靠后的色觉区 之间的正常连接 但假如另外一个人的基因 在非感觉区作用 他就会拥有连接 看似无关的事物的能力 这就是象征的定义-- 从不相似中发现相似 自然地 联觉更频繁地出现在 善于运用比拟的艺术家中 像小说家弗拉基米尔·纳博科夫 画家大卫·霍克尼 还有作曲家比利·乔尔 以及Lady Gaga 但为何我们这些非联觉者 会明白像“锐利的芝士” “甜蜜的人”之类的比喻? 碰巧视觉 听觉 还有运动 已经联系得十分紧密 即使是拙劣的口技表演者也能让我们相信 人偶真的在说话 电影 类似地 让我们相信 声音是来自演员的嘴巴 而不是周围的音响 所以 在内心深处 我们都是有联觉者 在表面上却不知晓感觉的联结 每时每刻都在发生 大脑里信息的互相干扰是常态 而不是例外 而在我听来 这真是一件甜蜜的事!