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from the Let-me-put-my-glasses-on-so-I-can-hear-you-better dept.
[Editor's note: Synesthesia is "a neurological phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway."]
Nothing could be more intensely subjective or taken-for-granted than the ineffable way that each of us perceives the world. This is why many synaesthetes go through a lifetime without realising that their everyday sense experience is exceptional or strange. Those who do, report a moment of startled self-awareness when friends respond with an uncomprehending: ‘What do you mean, my name tastes of split-pea soup?’ Such eureka moments have grown increasingly common since the 1980s, when cognitive tests were first developed to judge the authenticity of the reports through to the mid-1990s, when brain scans and brain-wave measurements began tracking the physiology of synaesthesia’s various forms.
Writing in The Oxford Handbook of Synesthesia in 2013, Richard Cytowic, a neurologist and synaesthesia researcher at George Washington University, describes the ‘astonishment and enthusiasm’ reported by synaesthetes after tests validated that they weren’t ‘making it all up’.
http://aeon.co/magazine/psychology/are-we-all-born-with-synaesthesia/
(Score: 3, Informative) by SlimmPickens on Thursday January 22 2015, @05:29AM
I've been reading a couple of books that are somewhat related to this:
Soft-Wired, How the New Science of Brain Plasticity Can Change your Life [amazon.com] has little science, mainly references his own website and serves as an ad for his brain training website [brainhq.com](which I signed up for lol), but does cover lots of interesting cases where they've been able to re-wire, even in late life, people with wide varieties of brain damage, including severe physical trauma, aids related complications, developmental problems and schizophrenia. It doesn't have anywhere near the technical information I wanted, just vague references to "modulatory neurotransmitters" but it is cheap and serves as a basis for further research.
The other one is Jeff Hawkins' On Intelligence, [amazon.com] which many of you will know. This basically talks about Jeffs ideas for algorithms mimicking the cortex. As a part of his argument that the cortex is essentially just one algorithm he talks about rats that have their visual input rewired to their hearing areas, and vice versa, it works!
On a side note, here's [youtube.com] Jeff (which probably needs it's own submission but I never got around to it) talking about the progress he's made and predicting that he'll have a working cortex in 2-4 years. He seems to be respected among computer scientists but not so much among neuroscientists.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 22 2015, @08:26AM
I used to be much more competent about a year ago. Though I didn't see a doctor about it I hit my head moderately hard about a year ago and I have been forgetful ever since. Before this I would criticize everyone else for being forgetful simply assuming it was due to a lack of effort. I have improved quite a bit but I guess I didn't realize that my previous cognitive abilities and memory could be so difficult or that anything could ever be difficult. I was always a fast learner and just assumed everyone was like this so long as they put some effort but that most are either lazy or don't care and now, though I have improved a lot since then, I'm not so much as fast a learner as I used to be. Heck, even now my typing speed, according to various websites, has reached within the top 99.99 percentile (I can reach up to 120 wpm with 100% accuracy) though after hitting my head my typing got worse for a long time and it took me quite a bit to recover (and my brain doesn't reliably work right anymore). Studies say that learning new languages is difficult yet I picked up Spanish relatively quick (being able to confidently and consistently understand natives verbatim when they are intentionally speaking fast to prevent me from understanding) and it's a third language to me. After hitting my head I could barley formulate a coherent sentence or read a newspaper article in English, my strongest language, much less others. For the longest time I had to re-look up words in English (and other languages) that I would have previously taken the definitions of for granted and when people tell me something I have to have them repeat it. Even today if I overwork my brain for too long it stops being able to keep up and basically starts crashing despite the fact that I am under less stress than before (I used to work many hours, go to school, take hard science classes, hardly study, and get A's. Not anymore). I've improved a lot since then but I'm still relatively slow, my reading and listening comprehension especially. My reading comprehension still ranks below average on various websites when before it ranked well above and I used to read through and devour science textbooks and get very good grades effortlessly. Oh well, hopefully one day I'll regain back my previous competence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 22 2015, @08:46AM
(same poster)
also after hitting my head I had to use a GPS to get to places I've been to many times. It was so bad I forgot my way home from one place I worked at at the time, a place I've been driving to and from every weekend for a year. For a good six to eight months after I hit my head I would regularly forget where I parked my car no matter how hard I tried to remember, though I'm way better now (not 100% though). From what I've been reading online all the studies show that the best thing to do is to not overdo it, you can't just 'tough' something like this 'out', you have to just relax, which took me a long time to finally accept and so that's what I've been trying to do more for a while and it's helped a lot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 22 2015, @11:22AM
One of the major difficulties with this type of situation is that you've relied on your ability to remember things your entire life. No matter how good or bad your memory was, you had adapted to make the most out of it with minimal effort. Learning a different way without any practice or preparation is very hard.
I had a minor stroke back in '98. It took away almost every memory I had, including my childhood, my education, all of the books I'd read, movies I'd seen, etc. The one thing that I didn't lose was my memory of music (the brain is a funny thing). Work wise I was back at square one. I had to learn how to program all over again. It took a while just to be able to remember something I'd read the previous day. Eventually it got good enough that I could really start studying again. It took a few years for me to be able to work as a programmer again, but at least I still had the 100's of comp-sci & programming books stuffed away in boxes. Without the books I already had I wouldn't have had any idea what I used to know or where to start.
Learning how to remember again, or how to learn again, is a seemingly insurmountable task. It takes time and effort. To quote the chief Lone Watie in 'The Outlaw Josey Wales', "Endeavor to persevere".
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday January 22 2015, @11:42AM
Amazing story. Did you ever regain any of the lost memories (childhood etc) or can you only replace them by re-learning things?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 22 2015, @12:18PM
The lost memories are completely gone. Occasionally a fragment of something will pop into my head that I think happened when I was younger. I'll make a note of it and then ask someone who might know if I was ever in that situation or if it was even feasible.
Some things, like reading music, I've never been able to re-learn. I still seem to have some visual issues (almost like dyslexia, but not exactly). No more looking at something once and memorizing it. Other things, like learning directions, birthdays, etc come naturally. Sometimes I can recognize someone I've met but I can't really remember where I know them from or why I know them (this still pisses off my brother's ex-wife). I ran into someone I thought I knew at the grocery store once and spoke with them for several minutes but had no idea who they actually where (it was my mailman).
Sometimes I stumble across something that I did years ago and had no idea. It's like discovering pieces of my own secret life before the stroke.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday January 22 2015, @01:00PM
Thanks for answering my question. Well done for putting your life back together after suddenly losing something so important, that most people just take for granted. It must be tough.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 23 2015, @12:15AM
Thanks. I'd like to take full credit for it, but honestly my body just figured out how to make things right. Intellectually, I was pretty much just a bystander