As the "Scientific American_ article in the first Web site (
1) asks: "When you eat chicken, does it feel pointy or round? Is a week shaped like a tipped-over D with the days arranged counterclockwise? Does the [musical] note B taste like horseradish? Do you get confused about appointments because Tuesday and Thursday have the same color?" For most people, the answer would be a resounding 'no,' but for a few, life without this integration of two or more senses would be unimaginable. The feature-length story from Scientific American, written by two scientists from the University of California-San Diego, offers an excellent resource for exploring the fascinating neurological condition known as synesthesia. The following site (
2) contains a scientific paper on the neural basis for synesthesia, published by the same authors of the previous article. For a more general overview of synesthesia, check out this brief Web site from Neuroscience for Kids, an educational feature provided by Eric H. Chudler of the University of Washington (
3). Similarly, the following Web site contains an article from the Monitor on Psychology offering a condensed introduction to synesthesia and a history of research in this area (
4). The BBC Web site offers a full transcript and audio file of a recent lecture and Q&A session given by V. S. Ramachandran (again, one of the authors of the Scientific American pieces), as part of the Reith Lecture Series 2003 (
5). The next Web site from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (
6) offers interesting excerpts from a conversation between two synesthetes about their own unique versions of synesthesia. With the next site (
7), non-synesthetes can experience something loosely similar to the real thing via a downloadable "real time interactive music-visualization program, which endeavours to use for intensification of music perception natural connection between acoustic and visual sensations," created by I. Vilenkin. Finally, synesthetes are well-represented in the arts, as evidenced by this Web site from the Department of Psychiatry at Cambridge University -- readers will find descriptions of some famous synesthetes, as well as examples of non-synesthetic artists, composers, and writers whose work embraces synesthetic expression (
8).
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