What is Synesthesia and what are Fuzzy Functions?
From Wikipedia: Synesthesia (also spelled synæsthesia or synaesthesia; from the Ancient Greek σύν syn, "together", and αἴσθησις aisthēsis, "sensation") is a neurological phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. People who report such experiences are known as synesthetes.
What it means: Literally a synthesizing of the senses.
Fuzzy Functions: (sensory channel distortions) Read also Distortion in The Meta Model
"Fuzzy Functions" were defined by John Grinder and Richard Bandler in The Structure of Magic
Volume II (1976) as a connecting or overlapping of our sensory representational systems.
Technically, Grinder and Bandler define "fuzzy functions" as: Any modeling involving a representational system and either an input channel or an output channel in which the input or output channel involved is a different modality from the representational system with which it is being used. In traditional psychophysics, this term, 'fuzzy function', is most closely translated by the term 'synesthesia'.
Hearing a loud noise (auditory input channel) and feeling startled or frightened (kinesthetic representational system), for example, is a "fuzzy function" because the sound has overlapped onto physical and emotional sensations. Seeing internal imagery while listening to music, or having emotional responses to seeing various facial expressions would also be a results of "fuzzy functions."
Fuzzy functions are typically characterized by terms such as "see-feel" or "hear-feel" circuits.
According to Grinder and Bandler, fuzzy functions are the way in which our experience acquires
meaning, but can also be the source of confusion and stress. Fuzzy functions create problems when
they lead to stuck states and when we have no choice about them. Problematic fuzzy functions can be
dealt with by sorting and separating the representational channels that have become fused or confused.
This can be accomplished a variety of ways. Accessing Cues and Submodality interventions can be used to help people clarify and influence different aspects of their sensory experience. The Failure Into Feedback process, for example, employs the use of both eye movements and submodalities to
sort and restructure fuzzy functions related to the experience of failure.
"Fuzzy functions are the processes for representing the world which is the basis of semantic ill-formedness, when our clients do not have choices what they see-feel or hear-feel, feel-hear, etc. Since semantic ill-formedness is the source of much of the pain we see and hear in therapy, we would like briefly to review the possibilities of fuzzy functions and their outcomes.
Awareness = Input Channels
Think = Representational Systems
Act = Output Channels
A person can hear (input) words, - Auditory Awareness
make a picture (representational system), - Visual Thoughts
and express it by pounding his fist (output channel) - Kinaesthetic Action.
Input: visual ---> Representation: Kinaesthetic = Type of Semantic Ill-Formedness: Cause-effect/You make me sad etc.
Input: Auditory ---> Representation: Kinaesthetic = Type of Semantic Ill-Formedness: Cause-effect/You make me sad etc.
Input: K ---> representation: V = Mind reading/I can see he's scared.
K ---> A = MR/I know what he's thinking.
V ---> A = MR
A ---> V = MR
All the Mind-reading functions = Lost Performative/He knows it's wrong. She's crazy not to see it. All smokers are crazy. Good girls don't hit boys. It is true that money implies happiness.
2 (or more) verbs/process words that are senses, ie, I X X, where X is the verb.
Examples of Fuzzy Function Predicates
see-feel: "I see how you feel", "I look hot", "You see I'm in pain", "Blue is the warmest colour", "The judge appeared to be a cold man",
hear-hear: "I hear what you're saying"
feel-see: "I'm feeling blue", "Ran into X", "Tickle me pink",
feel-hear: "Heated debate",
feel-feel: "I feel rough", "I feel your pain", "I feel I can overcome hard problems."
taste-see: "Taste the rainbow",
Others
Extra-sensory/Time related/Spatial: "Put the past behind you (ST)," "The shape of things to come (VS)," "Sight for sore eyes (VKV)," "Take a hold of the situation (KS)," "The foreseeable future (VT)," "The future is bright (TV)," "It is beyond me (S)," "You are beneath me.""I feel like I'm getting somewhere (KS)," "The smell of success," "In touch with reality/Lost touch with reality (KST)"
See-Hear:
Seeing sounds
A subjective visual experience of sound
(This character from the TV show Heroes is deaf, and so displaces her auditory channel for the visual, which results in this beautiful display of 'colourful music' much like an oscilloscope)
What do London Underground stops taste like?
Click on the map to enlarge.
The London Underground map has inspired a range of spin-offs over the years, with everything from musical icons to popular restaurants plotted along its interweaving lines.
But now a 54-year-old systems analyst from Blackpool has created the most bizarre version to date – a map that shows what each station tastes like.
James Wannerton tastes words when he reads or hears them thanks to a neurological condition called synaesthesia that links senses which are normally experienced separately.
He first noticed each Underground station created a distinct taste aged four when travelling to school with his mother from the family home near Willesden, north London.
Since then Mr Wannerton has continued to keep notes and make special trips to London after leaving the city to complete his "taste map" of the Tube. The 49-year project was finally completed earlier this year.
"This actually became a bit of an obsession – not unlike standing on breezy railway platforms collecting train numbers," Mr Wannerton said.
"I've often gone out of my way to travel through places such as Plaistow and Mill Hill East just to see what they taste like in situ and of course to add another to my collection."
Among the flavours that appear on the map are apple pie, bubble and squeak, HP sauce, purple grapes, chicken soup and soft boiled egg.
Many of the tastes come from Mr Wannerton's childhood with sweets such as love hearts, poppets, soft wine gums and jelly tots cropping up on the map.
A number of obscure flavours also feature including coal dust, putrid meat, burnt rubber, wet wool, pencil eraser, fuzzy felt and dried blood.
Mr Wannerton, who has been diagnosed with lexical-gustatory synaesthesia and is president of the UK Synaesthesia Association, explained how he detected the tastes.
"It is incredibly consistent. These tastes and textures never change," he said.
"All I did was traverse the underground lines. It was very natural and involuntary; when the taste popped up I made a note of it."
The map is now being used by researchers to help understand the link between word formations and the tastes synaesthetes experience.
The three tastiest stops
Baker Street
Baker Street is lovely. The best way to describe it is crusty and sweet, like jam roly-poly but slightly burnt. It has got loads of different tastes and textures. I love getting off there.
King's Cross
Like a moist Dundee cake without the almond bits. Or a rich fruit cake with lumps of fruit in. There is a mouth feel, not just an association, so it is like actually eating the stuff.
Tottenham Court Road
This is one of the strongest flavours on the map. It tastes of sausage and egg. There are crusty bits of burnt sausage and the egg is well done. A lovely breakfast taste.
The three nastiest stops
Bond Street
Bond Street tastes like hair spray, metallic and slightly bitter. You know when someone is spraying their hair and you breath in and taste some of it? It is like that.
St Paul's
It produces the mouthfeel and nasal taste of sprouts. Just eat a sprout and that is exactly what it tastes like. A soft, mushy, horrible flavour.
Seven Sisters
Spangles mixed in with minced beef. The "seven" produces a boiled, very lumpy mouthfeel which is sweet. The "sisters" gives a watery beef mince taste with a bit of gravy.
Others
Alice in Wonderland syndrome (AIWS, named after the novel written by Lewis Carroll), also known as Todd's syndrome or lilliputian hallucinations, is a disorienting neurological condition that affects human perception. Sufferers experience dysmetropsia (micropsia, macropsia, pelopsia, teleopsia) or size distortion of other sensory modalities. A temporary condition, it is often associated with migraines, brain tumors, and the use of psychoactive drugs. Anecdotal reports suggest that the symptoms of AIWS are fairly common in childhood, with many people growing out of them in their teens. It appears that AIWS is also a common experience at sleep onset, and has been known to commonly arise due to a lack of sleep. Alice in Wonderland Syndrome can be caused by abnormal amounts of electrical activity causing abnormal blood flow in the parts of the brain that process visual perception and texture.
It's Interesting that it happens at the onset of sleep and commonly arises due to a lack of sleep when you consider the hypothesis that creativity peaks in the human brain in the early hours of the morning (around the time we sleep), and also that most people report not being able to sleep due to "thinking about the universe, the meaning of life and everything!". It has been said that "Success never sleeps."
It should also be noted that creativity seems to be greatly enhanced while lying down (awake). And that the unconscious becomes much more active. Is it any wonder psychiatrists and therapists alike have their clients lying down on their sofas, and usually with the therapist out of sight? There is also an area in the brain called the the locus coeruleus that is believed to become more active when the body is horizontal and could be responsible for creativity.
I'd like to mention Aldous Huxley and his idea of the 'reducing valve'. Huxley believed that "Reality has to be funneled through a reducing valve of the brain and nervous system." Read more here.
(Note: I don't advise the use of drugs, or any mind-altering substances, I just think it's an intriguing topic worth studying.)
Negative Examples
Misophonia is a neurological disorder in which negative experiences (anger, flight, hatred, disgust) are triggered by specific sounds. Richard Cytowic suggests that misophonia is related to, or perhaps a variety of, synesthesia. Miren Edelstein and her colleagues have compared misophonia to synesthesia in terms of connectivity between different brain regions as well as specific symptoms. They formed the hypothesis that "a pathological distortion of connections between the auditory cortex and limbic structures could cause a form of sound-emotion synesthesia.
People who have misophonia are most commonly angered by specific sounds, such as slurping, throat-clearing, nail-clipping, chewing, drinking, tooth-brushing, breathing, sniffing, talking, sneezing, yawning, walking, gum-chewing or popping, laughing, snoring, swallowing, gulping, typing, coughing, humming, whistling, singing, certain consonants, or repetitive sounds. Sufferers experience fight/flight symptoms such as sweating, muscle tension, and quickened heartbeat. Some even feel unwanted sexual arousal, caused by the over-activation of hormonal circuits. Some are also affected by visual stimuli, such as repetitive foot or body movements, fidgeting, or movement they observe out of the corners of their eyes. Intense anxiety and avoidance behavior often develops, which can lead to decreased socialization. Some people feel the compulsion to mimic what they hear or see. Mimicry is an automatic, non-conscious, and social phenomenon. It has a palliative aspect, making the sufferer feel better. The act of mimicry can elicit compassion and empathy, which ameliorates and lessens hostility, competition, and opposition. There is also a biological basis for how mimicry reduces the suffering from a trigger
You can see - or is that "hear"? - how synesthesia can be developed with the use of NLP, namely modelling through mimicry.
What can we do with it & how can we use it?
I have always been amazed by things connected to increasing creative powers, and when it comes to creativity, there aren't really any limits on what can be done. To me, that's a similar principle to what the entirety of NLP is about: finding solutions where there doesn't at first glance appear to be any, and expressing them in a creative way. A way that not many other people seem to understand, and maybe never will, but with some basic awareness of synesthesia and its counterparts, we can begin to understand how people use their minds in incredible ways. Ways that we never thought were possible, and still don't to some extent, even with all the knowledge we have available to us today!
Paul Bach-y-Rita has done some fascinating work on Sensory Substitution helping people with disabilities such as blindness to sense vision through a different sensory channel.
Synesthesia has business benefits.
Synesthesia and the structure of beliefs by Robert Dilts
"overlap" an image and a sound together, for example. Sounds or images may also be overlapped onto
feelings. Overlap is possible because our sensory experiences become mixed together in our nervous
systems. It is this connecting together of information from the different senses that makes creativity
and learning possible. The process of overlap, for instance, makes it possible to form cognitive
strategies in which sensory processes and representations are linked together in a particular sequence.
Experiences which involve an overlap of the senses are usually more rich and powerful than
perceiving something through a single sense alone. Certainly, many of the most powerful experiences
in our lives (such as 'religious' or 'spiritual' experiences) involve an integrating together of the various
senses.
The process of overlap is used in many NLP processes in order to create or enrich a particular
experience. To create a resource state, for example, a person may be instructed to, "Visualize how you
would look if you were able to act effectively and resourcefully." When the person is able to form an
image, the picture may be overlapped onto the kinesthetic representational system by suggesting, "As
you watch yourself in that image, notice what feelings and body sensations would accompany those
actions." The image and feelings could be overlapped onto the auditory system by asking, "If you had
those feelings and sensations in your body, how would your voice sound? What sort of tone and
rhythm goes with those feelings?"
As the phenomenon of overlap demonstrates, not all of our mental experiences are clearly
distinguishable in terms of the five senses. Sometimes experiences become connected and overlapped
so completely that it is not possible to easily distinguish one from the other in a causal relationship they
are both there simultaneously but each needs the other in order to be there. Feeling moved by a
piece of music or art would be an example of this. The feeling could not exist without the art and the
art could not exist without the feeling.
Synesthesia is at the basis of our appreciation of art, our ability to feel compassion for the misfortunes
of others, and is a core quality of genius. They are also the basis of the so-called "fuzzy functions" in NLP.
Missing fuzzy function predicates
see-see: see-taste: see-smell: hear-see: hear-feel: hear-taste: hear-smell: feel-taste: feel-smell: smell-see: smell-hear: smell-feel: smell-taste: smell-smell: taste-hear: taste-feel: taste-smell: taste-taste.If my readers can think of any sensory-channel distortions using any of the above predicates, or want to share your own experiences with synesthesia, you're more than welcome to comment below. I'd love to hear from you!
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