Bill Roh
Tim Rhodes wrote:
> Bill wrote:
>
> >Humans are the same, my neurotransmitters work the same as yours, usually
> for similar reasons, I am build pretty close
> >to the same as you or anyone else.
>
> " I sat nearby while Michael whisked the sauce he had made for the roast
> chickens. "Oh, dear," he said, slurping a spoonful, "there aren't enough
> points on the chicken."
> "Aren't enough what?" I asked.
> He froze and turned red, betraying a realization that his first
> impession had been as awkward as that of a debutante falling down the
> stairs.
> "You're a neurologist, maybe it will make sense to you. I know it
> sounds crazy, but I have this thing, see, where I taste by shape." He
> looked away. "How can I explain?" he asked himself.
> "Flavors have shape," he started, frowning into the depths of the
> roasting pan. "I wanted the taste of this chichen to be a pointed shape,
> but it came out all round." He looked up at me, still blushing. "Well, I
> mean it's nearly spherical," he emphasized, trying to keep the volume down.
> "I can't serve this if it doesn't have points."
> An old-fashioned and odd diagnosis came to mind, but I wanted to hear
> more in Michael's own words to be sure. "It sounds like nobody understands
> what you're talking about," I finally said.
> "That's the problem," sighed Michael. "Nobody's ever heard of this.
> They think I'm on drugs or that I'm making it up. That's why I never
> intentionally tell people about my shapes. Only when it slips out. It's so
> perfectly logical that I thought everybody felt shapes when they ate. If
> there's no shape, there's no flavor."
> I tried not to regester any surprise. "Where do you feel these
> shapes?" I asked.
> "All over," he said, straightening up, "but mostly I feel things rubbed
> against my face or sitting in my hands."
> I kept my poker face and said nothing.
> "When I taste something with intense flavor," Michael continued, "the
> feeling sweeps down my arm into my fingertips. I feel it--its weight, its
> texture, whether it's warm or cold, everything. I feel it like I'm actually
> grasping something." He held his palms up. "Of couse, there's nothing
> really there," he said, staring at his hands. "But it's not an illusion
> because I feel it."
> One more question to be certain. "How long have you tasted shapes?"
> "All my life," he said. "But nobody ever understands." He shrugged
> and carved up the chickens. "Am I a hopeless case, Doc?" " [1]
>
> The above is by the former Chief Resident in neurology at George Washington
> University. It is an example of a person with /synesthesia/, a condition
> that had been known about since the 1700s, but which was not understood
> until someone entertained the odd proposition that perhaps we are *not* all
> wired-up the same after all.
>
> " Michael Watson and I first approached the puzzle of synesthesia as
> analysts expecting an objective answer, possibly a tangle of neurons, a
> short circut that we could point to and say, "Ah ha, here's the culprit."
> We could not possibly have realized at the time how deep we were in an
> adventure that increasingly laid bare the neurological evidence for seeing
> the primacy of emotion over reason; the impossibility of a purely
> "objective" point of view; the force of intuitive knowledge; and why
> affirming personal experience yields a more satisfying understanding than
> analyzing what something "means." " [2]
>
> [1] Richard E. Cytowic, M.D. 1993. _The Man Who Tasted Shapes; A Bizarre
> Medical Mystery Offers Revolutionary Insights into Emotions, Reasoning, and
> Consciousness_ (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam Book.)
> [2] ibid.
>
> -Prof. Tim