Bridging the Senses at The Royal Society
A two-day conference with experts from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and genetics to discuss the phenomenon of synaesthesia.
Do you taste music? Can you see sound? Does Tuesday have a color? Well, if you didn’t know, you probably have synaesthesia! And no, it does not come in pocket size and you do not take it with a cup of water (insert eye roll here). Synaesthesia is the phenomenon of senses merging in such a manner that one induces involuntary reaction to the other, or in simple terms, senses get so cozy and intertwined with each other that they get tangled. This would for example, result to someone with synaesthesia to see sound on top of hearing it, unlike us boring non-synaesthetes.
I got the opportunity to visit the Royal Society near St James in London for a conference on the latest research conducted around synaesthesia that was held on the 22nd — 23rd October 2018 with — my mother. Who goes to a conference with their mother you may ask. Believe it or not, and without taking full credit here, I was the one who discovered that my mother had synaesthesia — whom are only 2–4% of the general population. Read on to find out how!
On a ship with 2 hours to go and absolutely no internet; unless you had 10€ to spare for a voucher from the kiosk on board. We had absolutely exhausted all the games we could play without cards, yes we had obviously forgotten to take the essentials. We resorted to making up our own games. I was probably only 12 years old at the time, with my family, on our way to a Greek island for summer holidays.
“No, we can’t play that, it means we have to know the color for each letter and number and that’s way too many to remember!” – I naively said.
“Oh don’t be silly, we already know the color of each!” – my mother responded with a chuckle whilst shaking her head.
That was the moment. Naturally, as a scientist I investigated it further, asked her what other colors she sees, then challenged her color palette systematically throughout the day. She was pretty consistent. I did a bit more research – et Viola! With Google’s help, I found out there was such a thing called Synaesthesia.
This brings us back to the conference, a few colored years later, at the Royal Society, where experts of the field gathered from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and genetics to share their recent findings. Some spoke about computational linguistics, others on the first genome-wide investigation of the trait — turns out, there is no single gene for synaesthesia, sorry guys!
The handles to the entrance door of the building were DNA helices, and upon entering, there was way too much to look at! Fellows, including two of my idols, Elon Musk and Jim Al-Khalili, were enlisted. Jim was always someone to look up to especially coming from a Bachelors degree at the University of Surrey, where he started from too! He was the epitome of a well rounded scientist: highly technical but great at communicating the science in a lay format. Elon got me at NeuraLink, not to mention SpaceX, Tesla, the list goes on…
After a few more distractions within the building, we made it to the conference area, got our name tags and program and off we were! There were a couple of talks with coffee and tea breaks in between and lunch, giving you the chance to speak to the researchers and synaesthetes themselves. We met people that could visualize music in a way that, under no substance, will I ever be able to perceive! Some synaesthetes could spatially visualize numbers, with certain numbers having larger spaces around them than others — a kind of “number-orbit”. I met a synaesthete and Dr who said she could perceive the texture of music while composing. We spoke to experts within child synaesthesia and heard a story of a girl whom was so dis-tasted by the sound of her own voice that she became self-mute. The conversations during the breaks and the questions we got the opportunity to ask during the panel discussions, highlighted the importance of the research within the education system. It induced conversation and thought on what support system should be put in place for students with synaesthesia to leverage their phenomenon and improve their education experience.
It was interesting to find out the little research conducted around bilingual synaesthetes. The specimen, my mother, speaks four different languages with three different alphabets: Greek, Arabic, English and German. Not understanding how talented she was at learning new languages, Synaesthesia began to solve the mystery!
Finally, we were encouraged to walk around the poster room, where young researchers of the field, undergraduates, masters and PhD students, presented their work on synaesthesia. Coming from a Security and Crime Science department (and being a non-synaesthete myself), I found especially interesting one of the posters a student presented on acquired synaesthesia. Yes, that means developing synaesthesia given you are not a synaesthete to begin with (there is hope!). The case study was literally the smallest sample size, N = 1, of a 29-year-old man who took 2,5-dimethoxy -4- bromophenethylamine, or 2C-B for short, at 22 years-of-age. The drug triggered areas of the brain, namely the seratonin system and visual cortex, to replicate activity seen in the brains of synaesthetes. Now, I must admit, a lot of alarm bells went off in the methods, experimental design and ethical approval for the case study, nevertheless, the potential of better understanding the phenomenon of synaesthesia could override these — plus, he was a volunteer?
In light of controversial studies, one conversation in particular was very memorable for me as it directly relates to my own PhD research. As I was speaking to a voice-induced synaesthete, the infamous cyborg Neil Harbisson was mentioned. With an antenna literally implanted on his skull, Neil essentially uses the phenomenon of synaesthesia to compensate for being born a monochrome, ie colour blind. It was interesting to converse on how synaesthetes are naturally born with augmented human capabilities, these extra senses, whilst cyborgs pursue this enhancement through technology. I wonder what the attitudes between these two types of groups are; the cyborgs and synaesthetes – next blog?
So, next time you have a 20-minute argument about what color the parking floor level of B-096 is with your mother — even though you have a picture as evidence to show that it is green — consider the fact that she might be a synaesthete, that “B” is blue not green and that she can’t just change her color palette for you!
