Tasting Words & Hearing Colors

Why It Pays to Taste Words and Hear Colors

Charles Choi, LiveScience Contributor
Date: 22 November 2011 Time: 05:01 PM ET
colored numbers
Of the more than 60 known types of synesthesia, grapheme-color synesthesia, in which people see every number or letter tinged with a particular color, is the most common.
CREDIT: hkeita | Shutterstock

While most of us see sights and hear sounds, some people also hear colors and taste words, a mysterious phenomenon called synesthesia, which occurs when stimulating one of the five senses triggers experiences in an unrelated sense. Now researchers suggest this unusual trait can provide numerous mentalbenefits, potentially explaining why evolution has kept it around.

Scientists first discovered synesthesia in the 19th century, noting that certain people saw every number or letter tinged with a particular color, even though they were written in black ink. This condition, known as grapheme-color synesthesia, is the most common of the more than 60 known variants of synesthesia.

Although synesthesia can occur due to drug use, brain damage, sensory deprivation and even hypnosis, research has revealed that 2 percent to 4 percent of the general population naturally experiences synesthesia, with the phenomenon tending to run in families. Recent work analyzing the brains of people with grapheme-color synesthesia has revealed it is caused by an increased number of connections between sensory regions of the brain.

A key question regarding synesthesia is why the phenomenon has survived when it might not seem to provide any benefit. Now scientists, in a review of past research in the field, are finding answers from those who have it — synesthetes.

For instance, synesthesia is purported to be seven times more common in artists, poets and novelists than in the rest of the population. Cognitive neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran at the University of California, San Diego, and his colleagues suggest that mutant genes responsible for synesthesia might lead people to perceive links not only between seemingly unrelated sensations but also between seemingly unrelated ideas, leading to greater creativity.

Intriguingly, synesthetes at times also demonstrate remarkable memory abilities. For instance, British writer Daniel Tammet said that for him, each positive integer up to 10,000 has its own unique shape, color, texture and feel, and said he has used his synesthesia to memorize the mathematical constant pi to 22,514 digits. Scientists have suggested that synesthesia might be linked with savantism, the remarkable expertise, ability or brilliance in one or more areas at times seen in people with autism or other mental disorders.

In addition, researchers have found that number-color synesthetes are better than others at discriminating very similar colors, while mirror-touch synesthetes — those who experience tactile sensations on their own body when they watch someone else being touched — possess a more sensitive sense of touch. This suggests the senses of synesthetes may be enhanced in very subtle ways.

Altogether, researchers suggest that synesthesia could yield vital clues toward a better general understanding of the human mind.

“Synesthesia appears to rely on many of the same mechanisms present in all individuals,” neuroscientist David Brang at the University of California, San Diego, told LiveScience.

Brang noted that synesthesia may be an extreme variant of multisensory processing — that is, how the brain processes information from multiple senses at once.

“Understanding the differences between this exaggerated type of multisensory processing can tell us about the inner workings of normal multisensory processes as well,” Brang said. He added that synesthetes might also help us better understand the neuroscience of creativity.

Brang and Ramachandran detailed their findings online Nov. 22 in the journal PLoS Biology

from:    http://www.livescience.com/17156-synesthesia-taste-words-benefits.html

Solar Filament — 11/23

ERUPTION: The day before Thanksgiving, however, was not so quiet. On Nov. 23rd, a magnetic filament wrapping around the sun’s NW limb rose up and erupted. Click on the arrow to play the movie recorded by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory:

The eruption hurled a cloud of plasma (a “CME”) into space but not toward Earth. Because of the blast site’s high-northern location on the sun, the cloud flew up and out of the plane of the solar system; no planets will be affected.

Earthquake of Hokkaido, Japan

Very strong earthquake near the Hokkaido Coast, Japan

Last update: November 24, 2011 at 11:43 am by By 

Earthquake overview : At 07:25 PM local time a very strong earthquake occurred at intermediate depth near the Hokkaido coast, Japan. JMA Japan has reported a weakening depth of 30 km. Max. reported intensity is 5- (on a scale from 0 to 7)

Update : The earthquake was felt as far as the Akita and Yamagata prefectures

Update :The earthquake happened in the Urakawa Oki area  of Hokkaido

Update : Nor JMA nor GDACS have called a tsunami risk

Update : Indirect damage by landslides is always possible, especially for road 235 and 236, close to the epicenter

Update : The area closest to the epicenter is mainly a wilderness area with very few villages and towns

 

Image from the wild Hokkaido coast – Panoramio image courtesy Yobito Kayanuma

 

Update : WAPMERR, the theoretical damage engine does not expect injuries, fatalities or major damagefrom this earthquake.

Update : Earthquake-Report.com does not expect serious damage as the epicenter is out in the sea and as we have an intermediate depth of 42 km (USGS) 30 km (JMA)

Update : this earthquake can be seen as a powerful aftershock from the cruel Tohoku earthquake and tsunami from March 11 earlier this year

Update :  5+ is seen by Earthquake-report.com as potentially dangerous
Shaking values from JMA Japan :

Solar Filaments

fr/spaceweather.com

QUIET BEAUTY: With more than half a dozen spots scattered across the face of the sun, the sunspot number is high. Nevertheless, solar activity remains low. None of the sun’s so-called “active regions” are actually producing flares. The starscape, meanwhile, is as beautiful as ever. On Nov. 22nd, Robert Arnold took these pictures from his private observatory on the Isle of Skye, Scotland:

“The sun is criss-crossed with magnetic filaments and plasma clouds,” says Arnold. “It’s a beautiful view.”


Upcoming Solar Eclipse

NTARCTIC SOLAR ECLIPSE: On Nov. 25th the Moon will pass in front of the sun, slightly off-center, producing a partial solar eclipse visible from Antarctica, Tasmania, and parts of South Africa and New Zealand. An animated map created by graphic artist Larry Koehn shows the eclipse unfolding across the southern end of our planet:

Maximum coverage occurs about 100 miles off the coast of Antarctica where the sun will appear to be a slender 9% crescent. Observers in the eclipse zone should be alert for crescent-shaped shadows and sunbeams. The sun-dappled ground beneath leafy trees is a good place to look. Of course that won’t work in Antarctica where trees are scarce.

fr/spaceweather.com

Snowy Few Days in New England

Graphics: Heavy snow to slam the New England areas now through Wednesday

Published on November 22, 2011 7:35 pm PT
– By TWS Senior Meteorologist
– Edited by Staff Editor


(TheWeatherSpace.com) – Snowfall is starting across Eastern New York as a strong surface low moves into the area, which will bring heavy snowfall and high ice/sleet accumulations to the New England zones through Wednesday.

Latest radar imagery shows a band of heavy precipitation entering the Eastern New York areas. This will bring heavy snow across there andSouthern Vermont tonight, spreading north and east through New England, all the way into Canada by morning
.Very heavy snowfall is expected early Wednesday morning across the New England zones.

This snowfall will end as the day moves on and the associated surface low moves into the Atlantic, through the Long Island areas.

Gusty winds will bring near-blizzard conditions across parts of the coastal zones of Maine on Wednesday.

In addition to the snowfall, thundersnow in the heaviest bands is very likely.

TWS has developed three maps for this event and they are available at the links below.

Snowfall Forecast

Ice Forecast

Sleet Forecast

 

from:   http://www.theweatherspace.com/news/TWS-112211-new-england-snow-amounts.html

US Congress Declares Pizza A Vegetable

Congress Reaps Pizza Harvest

Congress Reaps Pizza Harvest

Tuesday, by act of Congress, pizza was declared a vegetable. The Spending Bill before our elected officials contained an Agriculture Department provision recognizing that school kids are dangerously obese, and that subsidizing school lunches of frozen pizza and french fries is unwise and unhealthy. The Congressional response: a slice of pizza = a serving of vegetables.

Continue reading…

Eckhart Tolle on Creativity

Eckhart on Creativity

Eckhart Tolle
a message from Eckhart Tolle
Friday, 18 November, 2011

There’s a particular dimension where creativity arises.  It’s a little bit like the wick burning the flame, and its sustenance is the oil – it’s in an oil lamp, and you are the flame.  All the analogies, by the way, are very deficient, but it’s just a distant approximation to get you into a sense of what that place is.  So you are the flame, and you feel your way into the very source – down the wick into where the oil is, inside yourself.  That’s the place, the source, so if anything is new, creative, then it has a fragrance of the source.

Somehow, humans, even humans who are still very much identified with their mind, many of them are touched by when they see or hear or whatever – come into contact with – something that came out of that deeper level, whether it’s a work of art, or a piece of music, or it could just be somebody talking.  And the words come from that deeper level.  It could just be somebody who has a good sense of humor – even that is already a form of creativity.  Spontaneous humor is to suddenly see something that one wouldn’t normally see – a connection between two seemingly unconnected things, and suddenly you connect them and everybody laughs.  Some people have that. Some people have one small area in which they can be creative, and that can be enough to provide you with fulfillment and an income, for the rest of your life – and to contribute that gift to others.

Great stand up comedians, for example, have that gift.  Of course, not everything they say is spontaneous, but when they prepare their stuff, they have to be creative.  Now I don’t know if anybody here has tried to be a standup comedian, but it’s difficult.  Many people try.  It’s hard to be funny.  But some have it, and it’s amazing – those few that have that gift.  And there too, the sense of humor is spontaneously something arises, and there it comes.  It’s being in touch with that.  It’s wonderful to be able to be in touch with that, and feel the power that flows from there, out into this world.  Now for that, of course you need some kind of vehicle, because the power needs to flow into some kind of form.

You can touch that place also, within, and it may not flow into creativity, because you have not developed a vehicle for it.  The very same power that gives rise to creativity can also manifest itself in different ways that we would not call creativity.  It could be a healing power that comes into effect the moment you enter into relationships with others.  Healing in a wider sense, not just physical healing.  You will not suddenly become a great musician if you have never touched an instrument, just because you touch that place within yourself.  It’s not going to manifest as a great scientific discovery in my case, because the vehicle is not prepared for that.  My mind is not prepared for that.  It doesn’t even work that way.  So for me to expect to come up with the Unified Field Theory that Einstein didn’t come up with – he tried after the theory of relativity, he tried for the rest of his life to come up with that – I am not going to come up with that.  It’s very unlikely.  The vehicle has not been prepared. I am not going to be a great pianist, because I don’t know how to play the piano.  So no matter how deeply I go within, it’s not going to flow into that.  You need to prepare the vehicle for creativity.

More important than that is the place – to be able to go within to that place of vibrantly alive stillness, where creativity arises.  And you can go in there, and if there’s no vehicle, it will not express itself in any form of creativity, not any conventional form of creativity.  But it may actually express itself in different ways.  I just mentioned one, which is an outflow in human interactions – and outflow of – very hard to put a word to it, but you can sense it, when you meet a person who is present in the interaction.  It’s a different energy frequency that operates.  And that is healing.  It is so formless that it does not require a previously prepared vehicle.  You can just be.  And you emanate Being.

© copyright 2008-2011. Eckhart Tolle . All rights reserved. http://www.eckharttolle.com/

IPCC Climate Panel Says Weird Weather Here to Stay

 

Despite uncertainties, the IPCC warns that climate change will bring more extreme weather.

Extreme weather, such as the 2010 Russian heat wave or the drought in the horn of Africa, will become more frequent and severe as the planet warms, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns in a report released today. Some areas could become “increasingly marginal as places to live in”, the report concludes.

Climate change will make extremes of hot weather more common, and more extreme, in coming decades.

It is “virtually certain” — meaning 99–100% probability in IPCC terminology — that the twenty-first century will see an increase in the frequency and magnitude of warm temperature extremes and a decrease in cold extremes.

It is much less clear, however, how climate change will affect rainfall, flood risk and storminess.

A summary of the report for policymakers was released today at the IPCC plenary meeting in Kampala, Uganda. The full report, compiled over the past two and a half years by more than 100 scientists, draws on the results of thousands of published studies on physical-climate change, risk management and climate-change adaptation, and is scheduled for release early next year.

Read the rest of the story

 

Latest on El Hierro

El Hierro Volcano (Canary Islands) : Red alert – spectacular increase of harmonic tremor

Last update: November 20, 2011 at 1:29 am by By 

Late night data update 19/11 – 23:16 UTC
– 15 M+1.5 earthquakes today
– Strongest earthquake being a 3.3 at 18:27
– Depth of the earthquakes since midnight : 16 to 23 km
– Harmonic tremor remains 
strong since 17:16 UTC tonight
– GOOD air quality all day long

 

Important update 19/11 – 17:46 UTC
– We have just noticed that the harmonic tremor is almost saturated again, the biggest change since the fallback on November 17. The second graph shows the harmonic tremor from November 17 when it collapsed, until the new saturated graph today.

Increase of harmonic tremor between 17:00 and 18:00 UTC on November 19 – image courtesy IGN

 

harmonic tremor from late November 17 until November 19 – Click on the image to see it in full size

 

Data update 19/11 – 16:37 UTC
– 10 M+1.5 earthquakes since midnight (a lot less than we have expected)
– Strongest earthquake being a 2.8 at 08:20
– Depth of the earthquakes since midnight : 16 to 23 km
– GOOD air quality values this morning

Update 19/11 – 16:37 UTC
– Ian Carson reports from El Hierro : Civil guard went out to sea in RIB (rigid inflatable) this morning. Spoke to English speaker also aboard. He said ‘volcano quiet today, stain still visible but much lighter than in past ‘Jacuzzi’ times.

for more, updates, and reports, go to:   http://earthquake-report.com/2011/09/25/el-hierro-canary-islands-spain-volcanic-risk-alert-increased-to-yellow/