Maybe these notes on synaesthesia research are also relevant:
In their paper "Synaesthesia - A window into perception, thought and language" V.S. Ramachandran and E.M. Hubbard investigated grapheme-color synaesthesia and found that synaesthesia is a genuine perceptual phenomenon caused by hyperconnectivity between different brain areas (i.e. fusiform gyrus and the amygdala) at different stages in processing. This hyperconnectivity might be caused by a genetic mutation that causes defective pruning of connections between brain maps. This ability of experiencing cross-modal interactions or making abstract associations between two different sense modalities, such as vision and audition has been termed by Ramachandran and Hubbard 'cross-modal abstraction' and as they suggested it is probably a pre-requisite to the formation of human language. Ramachandran & Hubbard also claim that the specific gene causing the neurological "defect" of synaesthesia may have survived over thousands of years of natural drift for
this sole purpose: language formation, thus offering a synaesthesia-based evolutionary theory of language.Synaesthesia is a neurological condition, where a sensation is produced
in one sense modality when a stimulus is applied to another sense
modality, as when the hearing of a certain sound induces the
visualization of a certain color. Artistic exploration of synaesthetic
perceptions most commonly consists of perceptual abstractions
comprising conjunctions of sonic and visual elements. Synaesthesia,
however, can occur between nearly any two senses or perceptual modes.
Synaesthesia is a highly individualistic neurological condition, where the symptomatic correspondences of two separate sense modalities among synaesthetes who may share similar cases of synaesthesia, by definition, hardly ever coincide. However, as discussed by Campen and Harrison, it has been suggested by French philosopher Maurice Merleau Ponty in his classic book The Phaenomenology of Perception (1945) that every person is able to have synaesthetic perceptions, as synaesthesia and synaesthetic metaphor have a common ground in the unified preconscious perception. According to Campen, Ponty draws from the German theory of gestalt perceptions. Ramachandran, has grounded this argument on an experimental basis, using the "booba-kiki" effect, which demonstrates that the neurological construction of the human brain makes the vast majority of the healthy human population able to share and understand synaesthetic qualities. This common property shared by
all human beings is abstraction, the ability to create associations between seemingly unrelated realms. Harrison, finally, refers to specific EEG experiments that clearly show how neonates up to 3 months old remarkably show signal of activity in the visual areas of the occipital cortex when an auditory event is presented to them, thus verifying the fact that we are all synaesthetes, or at least have been, once, at the earliest stage of our lives.
Referenes:
1.V.S. Ramachandran, E.M. Hubbard (2001): "Synaesthesia - A window into perception, thought and language" Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2001, 8(12): 3-34.
(Their claim that language was a specific target of natural selection has been previously discussed by Pinker & Bloom (1990) contradicting older theories (such as Chomsky's), that the ability of language was merely a by-product of other cognitive adaptations. See Pinker, S. & Bloom, P. (1990): Natural language and natural selection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 13, 707-784.) See also: V.S. Ramachandran (2004): A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness: From Impostor Poodles to Purple Numbers, New York: Pi – Pearson Education Press, 2004, pp. 72-82.
2. Cretien Van Campen (2008): The Hidden Sense: Synesthesia in Art and Science, MIT Press, Leonardo series, ex. Ed. R. Malina, Sean Cubbitt, ed. in Chief, Cambridge, Massachussets, London England 2008, p. 98
3. Harrison continues this argument suggesting that pathways carrying auditory information in visual areas of the brain in some rare cases are preserved during later stages in human development and thus fall responsible for the formation of synaesthesia in adulthood. In Harrison, John (2001): Synaesthesia: The strangest Thing, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 17-19.
--- Στις Παρ., 05/03/10, ο/η Paul Hertz <ignotus@gmail.com> έγραψε:
Από: Paul Hertz <ignotus@gmail.com>
Θέμα: Re: [Yasmin_discussions] (Yasmin_discussions) Multisensory Perception
Προς: "YASMIN DISCUSSIONS" <yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr>
Ημερομηνία: Παρασκευή, 5 Μάρτιος 2010, 15:40
Hi Raewyn,
On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 6:31 AM, Raewyn Turner <r.turner@orcon.net.nz> wrote:
>
>
> Thanks Paul for pointing us to "InterMedia Patterns" your great blog with
> Jack Ox.
> Could you expand on the ways that multi-sensory perception affects
> language?
>
>
Briefly, to keep the topic going, I'd point to Alan Merriam's
classification scheme, and in particular how he remarks that cross-sensory
expressions seem to be common to all language.
"Intersense Transfer involves the perception of sensory qualities in
different modalities as similar. "Rough" and "smooth" sounds and surfaces,
for example."
I didn't note it in the post on the blog (
http://www.ignotus.com/intermedia/2008/02/types-of-intermodal-experience/),
but as I recall, in his text Merriam says these kinds of expression seem to
be common to all languages.
I would suggest two other ways that language gets entangled with
multi-modality and cross-modality.
Music, we know, appears in all cultures. There is research that suggests
that the kinesthetic element of music production (on "traditional"
instruments) excites "mirror neurons" in the listener. We perceive the
resistance and varying intensity of musical sound as a kind of internalized
gesture. It seems fairly reasonable to assert that the cadence of speech
excites a similar response--the loudness and timbre of the voice convey
intensity over time. This is a non-semantic aspect of spoken language, and
it can be evoked in written language (consider poetry).
We can take this gestural aspect of language a step farther. Gaston
Bachelard suggest, for example, that the word "clignoter" (to wink) sounds
like what it means: the varying muscular effort/intensity of winking is
mapped onto the sound of the verb. I can hear this--the "gn" or "ñ"
(Spanish) sound has something of the press and release of a wink to it. It's
speculative, yet not entirely unreasonable to think that language is formed
by such underlying, ultimately neurological processes. Poets exploit
language as if such a process were at work.
And metaphor, that was long thought of an an adjunct or ornament to
language, now seems to be revealed as a window into the way the mind
structures meaning. I'd just point for the moment to the work of Gilles
Fauconnier and Mark Turner (http://www.markturner.org/#ARTICLES, see
"Rethinking Metaphor") and Goerge Lakoff and Mark Johnson (Metaphors We Live
By, etc.).
I would would suggest that intersense transfer, if it is common to all
languages just as metaphor apparently is, also offers a window on the
functioning of hte brain.
Will try to write more a little later, have to go now.
best,
-- Paul
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