Hypnosis reaches the parts brain scans and neurosurgery cannot | Vaughan Bell | Science Whenever AR sees a face, her thoughts are bathed in colour and each identity triggers its own rich hue that shines across her mind's eye. This experience is a type of synaesthesia which, for about one in every 100 people, automatically blends the senses. Some people taste words, others see sounds, but AR experiences colour with every face she sees. But on this occasion, perhaps for the first time in her life, a face is just a face. No colours, no rich hues, no internal lights. If the experience is novel for AR, it is equally new to science because no one had suspected that synaesthesia could be reversed. The surprising reversal of AR's synaesthesia was reported in a recent study by psychologist Devine Terhune and his colleagues at Lund University in Sweden. When the colour of the onscreen face clashed with the colour that appeared in her mind's eye, she reacted slowly, as if trying to read traffic lights through tinted glasses. Vaughan Bell blogs at Mind Hacks
National Gallery Home - Camden Arts Centre Tales from the Road - The NMSU Chile Pepper Institute Coming Soon - Stay tuned for a BIG announcement about an awesome project Jorge is working on! PHD Store - Our store was down for a while, but now it is back! Free excerpt from The PHD Movie 2! - Watch this free clip from the movie that Nature called "Astute, funny"! Watch the new movie! Filming is done! Coming to Campuses this Fall! The Science Gap - Watch Jorge's TEDx Talk: ICA Institute of Contemporary Arts : Homepage : Homepage What Are We Made Of? : Through The Wormhole What are the biological differences between different races? Genetic anthropologists have discovered that up to 7 percent of our genes have mutated to new forms in the past 50,000 years. These changes are not just related to skin and eye color, but also to our bones, our digestive systems, and even our brains. This leads to an unsettling question. Or will the natural evolution of the brain continue, making our distant offspring far smarter than us?
British Museum