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Synesthesia

2008; Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; Volume: 83; Issue: 7 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1097/acm.0b013e31817eb5ab

1938-808X

Barry Bub,

Multisensory perception and integration

Are You Listening? Image from the cover of Scientific American: Secrets of the Senses Commentary Primary colors swimming centrifugally upon a large round canvas arrest my attention. The painting lures me from the street. Entering the gallery, I pause to listen to the canvas. Convinced I know what this painting is about, I look for the artist to inquire as to its title and theme. "The title is 'Are You Listening?'" she says, then continues: "You see, I had just been through the most frustrating nonlistening experience and just threw my body into motion on the canvas." Synesthesia, the very concept I'd been pursuing as a model for more authentic and effective listening for health care professionals. I inquire if she knows about the phenomenon. Her eyes shine with a double twinkle and her whole body responds affirmatively as she replies: "Synesthesia? Oh, yes!" Later, another day, another gallery and I am fusing with a cat painting, loving its expression of bemused pain, a touch of barely suppressed anger, and ridiculous adorability despite it all. What was the artist thinking? How does an artist listen to and portray the human condition in such coherent abstraction? I know the answer even as she tries to explain: "When I was a child I would experience pain as images and colors. A sharp pain, perhaps gas, looked like a yellow zig-zagged lightening streak. A dull nausea feeling was greenish, darker, sometimes red." Synesthesia was first described in 1880 by Victorian polymath and half cousin of Charles Darwin, Francis Galton. The word syn-esthesia (joined sensation) shares a root and contrasts with an-esthesia (no sensation.) The condition, a very real one, occurs in 4.4% of the population and is seen more commonly in children and females, in families as an inherited condition, and in creative individuals. Synesthetic individuals have increased functional connectivity in their brains: sensory information entering one channel somehow triggers activity in another, resulting in tasting sounds, smelling shapes, seeing music. A number of famous artists, musicians, and writers were probably natural-bornsynesthetes. Edvard Munch was inspired to paint "The scream" based on the anxiety he felt seeing a blood-red sunset. Listening to his painting evokes the viewer to almost hear the silent scream. An exhibition honoring the late Viktor Hartmann flooded composer Modest Mussorgsky with notated imagery. Mussorgsky then memorialized his recently deceased friend by transforming the paintings into a musical composition titled "Pictures at an exhibition." Similarly, when listening to music, Wassily Kandinsky saw colors and lines, which he applied to canvas in his abstract paintings. Composer Claude Debussy captured moonlight in his dreamlike piece "Claire de lune"; and, in turn, Massachusetts artist Judith Goetemann reformats Debussy's music into abstract paintings. Individuals with a high degree of creativity, such as artists, dancers, writers, poets, and musicians, have a high incidence of synesthetic ability, which likely parallels their utilization of metaphor. Hence lines such as Rudyard Kipling's "The dawn comes up like thunder" and Sor Juana de la Cruz's "Hear me with your eyes." Perhaps the most famous literary depiction of synesthesia is Biblical: "Now all of the people were seeing the thunder-sounds, the flashing-torches, the trumpet sound, and the mountain smoking" (Exodus 20:15). This scene is the theophany that was the giving of the Ten Commandments at Sinai. For the Israelites, sight and sound were fused into one unified experience so that their response is reversed: "We will do and we will hear." Although we may all have some latent synesthetic abilities (note the common expressions blue mood, sharp cheese, loud colors), nonsynesthetes at most have very limited cross-modal sensory ability. As physicians, then, or simply as attuned humans, how to transcend simple unimodal hearing of words and utterances so as to create a deep and satisfying, contactful listening experience in which nonverbal communication is heard and understood? Nonsynesthete gestalt therapist DanielBloom describes this ability when he says, "I touch by my listening." My search for a model that would render listening more authentic and effective for those in my field had led me first to synesthesia. From there, the answer arrived in the form of a single Hebrew word. When the question, "What is listening to you?" was raised on a narrative medicine list serve, Canon Marlin Whitmer, a Christian chaplain, responded with "hineni." This word immediately resonated with me. When God called to Moses, he answered "hineni." Others such as Abraham, Esau, Jacob, Samuel, and the prophets Elijah and Isaiah all used the expression when called upon by God. Even God answered "hineni" when the Israelites cried out in thirst for fluid and faith (Exodus 24:7). The word hineni means here I am—totally and completely present, every sense focused and fused in awareness for you. With hineni, all sensations unite into a multimodal sensory experience. When we are becoming the listening, our contact with our environment changes—time slows, insight deepens, the information flowing via all our senses fuses into a knowing that is bigger than the sum of its parts. When in hineni mode with another, our responses reveal that the shared understanding and transformation of both persons is inevitable. When in hineni mode with our environment, inexplicable synchronous, even mystical, experiences frequently occur. I saw the accompanying cover of Scientific American en route to New Zealand to give a keynote address that integrated holism, synesthesia, and listening. The similarity to "Are You Listening?" is striking, and the article inside pertains to synesthesia. The next time someone comes before you needing to be heard, let this person be a canvas, a composition. Let your whole self be in attunement (at-une: French for "one"), at one, as found in atonement (at-one-ment). Perhaps say "hineni" inside, let your senses fuse, and delight in the impact as you touch with your listening.FigureFigureBarry Bub, MD