Wednesday Is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia
Wednesday Is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia
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星期三是靛蓝色：发现联觉的大脑
DOI：
10.5860/choice.47-1138
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发表时间：
2009
影响因子：
9.8
通讯作者：
D. Eagleman
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
R. Cytowič;D. Eagleman
联觉这种非凡的多感觉现象如何改变了我们对大脑的传统看法。一个有联觉的人可能会感觉到指尖上食物的味道，感觉到字母“J”是闪烁的洋红色，数字“5”是翡翠色的绿色，听到和尝到丈夫的声音是奶油色的金棕色。联觉者很少谈论他们特殊的感官天赋--他们要么相信其他人和他们一样感受世界，要么相信其他人不这样。然而，联觉发生在二十人中的一个，在艺术家中更常见。小说家弗拉基米尔纳博科夫就是一位著名的联觉者，他在蹒跚学步的时候就坚持认为他的木制字母板上的颜色“全错了”。“他的母亲完全理解他的意思，因为她也有联觉。纳博科夫的儿子德米特里在本书的后记中讲述了这个故事，他也是一个联觉者，进一步说明了联觉是如何在家庭中运行的。在《星期三是靛蓝蓝》一书中，先驱研究员理查德·塞托维奇和杰出的神经科学家大卫·基德曼解释了联觉的多感官体验背后的神经科学和遗传学。由于联觉与现有理论相矛盾，Cytowic花了20年时间说服同事们，这是一种真实而重要的大脑现象，而不仅仅是一种好奇心。今天，来自15个国家的科学家们正在探索联觉，以及它如何改变大脑如何工作的传统观点。Cytowic和Reynleman认为感知已经是多感官的，尽管对我们大多数人来说，它的多个维度存在于意识之外。他们指出，现实比大多数人意识到的更主观。不仅仅是好奇心，联觉是心灵和大脑的一扇窗户，突出了人们看待世界的方式的惊人差异。
How the extraordinary multisensory phenomenon of synesthesia has changed our traditional view of the brain. A person with synesthesia might feel the flavor of food on her fingertips, sense the letter "J" as shimmering magenta or the number "5" as emerald green, hear and taste her husband's voice as buttery golden brown. Synesthetes rarely talk about their peculiar sensory gift-believing either that everyone else senses the world exactly as they do, or that no one else does. Yet synesthesia occurs in one in twenty people, and is even more common among artists. One famous synesthete was novelist Vladimir Nabokov, who insisted as a toddler that the colors on his wooden alphabet blocks were "all wrong." His mother understood exactly what he meant because she, too, had synesthesia. Nabokov's son Dmitri, who recounts this tale in the afterword to this book, is also a synesthete-further illustrating how synesthesia runs in families. In Wednesday Is Indigo Blue, pioneering researcher Richard Cytowic and distinguished neuroscientist David Eagleman explain the neuroscience and genetics behind synesthesia's multisensory experiences. Because synesthesia contradicted existing theory, Cytowic spent twenty years persuading colleagues that it was a real-and important-brain phenomenon rather than a mere curiosity. Today scientists in fifteen countries are exploring synesthesia and how it is changing the traditional view of how the brain works. Cytowic and Eagleman argue that perception is already multisensory, though for most of us its multiple dimensions exist beyond the reach of consciousness. Reality, they point out, is more subjective than most people realize. No mere curiosity, synesthesia is a window on the mind and brain, highlighting the amazing differences in the way people see the world.