--Original published at Collin's Blog

I watched the TED talk “Different Ways of Knowing” by Daniel Tammet because it seemed interesting how senses can activate each other and work together to gain different understandings of common concepts. Such as calculations, Tammet uses shapes and simple multiplication to solve complex math in a simpler way than taught in schools. His synesthesia also enables him to see color in words, this helps him pick out meanings in phrases and piece together figurative language like alliteration and syllables in words. I never knew there was a condition like synesthesia, it was interesting to see how someone like Daniel Tammet perceived the world using all his senses collectively.
This condition would probably change a person’s perception of the world completely. Not only just reading words and seeing color but being able to understand complex problems and pick up on fine details in literature. A person with the condition would have an incredible gift but it could become overwhelming and sometimes impractical in the modern world. It may be hard for common people to fully understand the condition of someone with synesthesia, as said by Tammet when he explains his own daily life where his conversations with other people can be awkward when they learn of his condition. Daniel Tammet says that the condition is manageable, but to someone who is unaware that they may have synesthesia the common world can be complicated, and their own perception can feel overwhelming.
According to Daniel Tammet, his condition can also be useful, being able to perceive problems using different senses could be helpful for problem solving skills and comprehending an author’s tone in their literature. Daniel is able to manage his condition which allows him to gain heightened perception from his sense without being completely overwhelmed.

--Original published at KatiesPerspectives

Daniel Tammet sees the world  in a different way – a more numerical, colorful, and linguistic way. This is called Synesthesia and it involves a more intricate interwoven interpretation of the world. He is constantly reminded of why he became an Author by the way people treat him differently when they find out that he lives with this. He believes, “our personal perceptions are at the heart at how we acquire knowledge.” Daniel mentions how our aesthetic judgements, rather than abstract reasoning, guide and shape the process by which we all come to know what we know. Admitting that he is an extreme example of this, Daniel shows many examples of how he connects colors and shapes and numbers. Daniel shows how he paints pictures of how numbers look in his head and how equations show up on paper for him.

While I was watching this video, I thought it was absolutely incredible what Daniel can do with his mind and how he chooses to use his “superpower.” I became somewhat baffled by how he saw the world and his attempted explanation of how he can connect many things in his mind. Many of the things he mentioned and the connections he made, made absolutely no sense to me and how he is capable of keeping all this information organized in his mind is absolutely astonishing. Daniel is incredibly well spoken and is very bold for speaking out about Synesthesia and the things that go on in his mind. Realizing that there are such amazing people in the world who are able to do such cool things with their minds (whether they mean to or not) it so incredible. Overall, I thought it was incredible to step inside Daniel Tammet’s mind and try and see things from his perspective while he was talking. .

One could argue that having this condition would be an advantage in every-day life and in the world today. Being able to see things from different perspectives and take on simple things from a multitude of different angles might, in fact, be more of a curse than you think. I would argue that although these skills might help someone pass their math or history exams, it would be absolutely overwhelming all the time to be thinking about details so much. Having to explain such a complex condition to people you meet who might not understand could become exhausting too. Synesthesia is not something that I imagine is easy to live with and, in my opinion, would be a curse rather than a blessing.

--Original published at Madison's Blog

In the TED Talk entitled “Different Ways of Knowing,”  Daniel Tammet tries to explain and explore his experiences dealing with Synesthesia. His condition allows his senses to cross over, and activate each other in unusual ways. He can associate words with colors and emotion, or he sees numbers as each having their own color and symbol. He sees the number 6 as a tiny and sad black hole, and 1 as a bright flash of light. He also sees numbers as different colors, for example the number 4 is blue and the number 5 is yellow. He perceives the world very differently than normal people do, his thought process is skewed. To normal people, this condition would seem to cripple us. To others, the condition of Synesthesia seems to be an advantage, since Daniel talked about being able to envision mathematical situations in a logical way, and solve problems easier. To break down a difficult math multiplication problem, he envisioned a chess board being 64 squares, and 75 squares being 3/4 of 100 and creating a mental picture. To us, this seems complicated and misleading, but to him it easily solved the problem. Although, people could take either side, saying it could pose some “superpowers” or create internal chaos. The fact of having more than one sense associated with a word, number, or everyday thought seems to fascinate people. I don’t think I could imagine having the fleeting glances of light and colors while simply trying to read a book. It would frustrate me to not have control over the associations my senses were making, since they could influence you. In the TED Talk though, Daniel didn’t seem to be phased by his condition, since he has always had it. He acknowledges his difference, and is striving to explain his perceptions to the general public. I think the concept of “seeing sounds and hearing colors” is interesting, but I personally don’t think it would benefit me.

--Original published at CurtisCollegeBlog

I enjoyed this video because of how it made me think of the way that I learn. The one sentence he said, “our personal perceptions are at the heart of how we gather knowledge,” and that stuck out to me. I tend to learn things by creating some sort of learning base. Then, in addition to that base I try to add more knowledge on to it. I try to make associations from the new things that I’m learning to add to the base. I feel like its easier than trying to remember a bunch of different things rather than one set system of things that can be built from. I generally do this with math, but sometimes I make the base wrong or incorrectly associate and then I struggle doing problems.

To move on to synesthesia, I think it would be more of a help than a hindrance in day-to-day life. I think it would also be an annoying part of your life. When he mentioned that sentence at the end, he analyzed so deeply that I felt it was unnecessary. I don’t know if his synesthesia made him do that, but I feel like that would be pretty annoying if every time I read something I had to think about other words that could be used in place.

--Original published at JD's Blog

I was amazed as I watched the video. The way Daniel Tammet describes his perception of different things is very interesting. I lie how he started by asking the audience to perceive the three questions. He forced them to think and even try thinking out of the box. After he had the audience try it he explained how he saw it. It was intriguing that he saw a different shape for each number. Not only did he see different shapes, but different colors as well. The painting he made where he wrote out the numbers and placed the colors together to solve math problems or even express the numbers of Pi; absolutely amazing! I can’t even imagine how it is living every single day with this condition. In some ways it seems like a blessing. The world seems to appear more alive to him and gives each and every little thing its own personality. His ability to decipher and obtain knowledge or use it solve problems is unbelievable. To be able to see the world through a different perspective must be awesome. He can use his skill to take calculations and questions designed for a pen and paper or even a calculator and solve them through his head. He can even explain how he simplifies it down into a grid or shapes to teach others how to compute it. I think this would help in day to day life through. Problem solving, but it could potentially be distracting with each and everything having so many different meanings. Overall, I feel that this condition would be hard to control, but would allow one to see and learn in a whole new way.

--Original published at Brittany's Thoughts

I chose the prompt on whether magic can help those with autism. According to the long video on magic done by NOVA, most people will focus on moving objects or on the magicians’ faces instead of on their hands during a magic act. This is what causes the magic to occur. The brain’s attention on other places will trick you into believing that the coin is disappearing in a coin trick or the ball is magically appearing under the cups. According to a study done by neuroscientists, people with autism may not see magic tricks that deal with social cues the same way those who don’t have autism would see it. People with autism may focus on places such as the magicians’ hands instead of their face, which would allow them to see the illusion take place and understand how it occurs. The article on a hypothesis about prediction in autism shows that the world overall may be very hard of people with autism to predict already with all the incoming stimuli that their brains cannot predict and process the same way those who do not have autism would process them. This describes the whole world as being stressfully magical to people with autism.

I am amazed at what our brains can do and how its attention works to make us see the trick as magical when it really is only our attention focusing somewhere else. To imagine that someone else can understand how the trick works because they do not focus the same way is also amazing. I’m surprised how one clip says that magic would be beneficial, whereas the other makes it sound like magic would not be beneficial because everything is “magic” to people with autism anyway. It feels inconclusive about the effects of magic for those with autism.

Personally, I feel that using magic with people with autism is worth a try. If they can detect how the trick is done, it may bring more of a feeling of concreteness to the world, especially if others that do not have autism cannot sense how the trick is being done. It can help create skills of perception by using other ones that already exist, but can also help improve understanding of social cues by helping them understand how others would not understand how the trick is done by they ways their attention focuses on the trick.

--Original published at Manda's College Blog

I chose to watch TEDs video by Daniel Tamment who is a autistic savant; I’ve never heard of someone who is autistic and is a self proclaimed philosopher so I found that very intriguing and almost honorable, being a role model to people with autism. Daniel also claims to have synesthesia. I’ll be honest and say that this made me scratch my head a little, a guy who has a social behavior disability, but is also very intelligent and has a unique ability to associate numbers with color? It’s definitely unique.

Daniel presented some examples to show what his synesthesia looks like. He can associate numbers with colors and math with pictures such as the chess board/graph that he showed us. And how some readings light up in color to him in his head. It was very interesting and to me, I just thought that it’s what a lot of mathematical geniuses solved problems like that. This can be a new way for students to be taught math, personally I’m terrible at math learning by repetition. I think by associating it with images and colors, problem solving would be relatable and easier to figure out.

He asked does “hnugginn” sound happy or sad to you, what is your sense of meaning to the word, most of the audience said happy, which is what I thought that as well as some sort of affection. It meant sad, he said sounds can be associated by personal experience and perception which I honestly didn’t see these as synesthesia. If you don’t know the language or word, you sound it out or you visually see if the word is familiar to you, also with how you are sounding it out, you generally use the sound of the word with feeling, how do you feel saying or sounding out the word? If it’s a foreign language and I’m hearing it from that person, I usually try to sense their emotion and how they sound. I may have misunderstood what Daniel was trying to point out to us, but I believe it’s just luck of the draw.

Synesthesia sounds like a gift to have and not some sort of handicap. Though I can imagine someone like Daniel especially because of his autism can get overwhelmed with the amount of colors and associations he could have going through his head all at once, it’s probably possible to get some sort of brain overload; sensory overload.

--Original published at Jessie's PSY105 Blog

For my first impression post this week, I chose Option 1 which was about synesthesia. This involved a TED talk given by Daniel Tammet who is a high functioning autistic savant. He talked about how, when he sees numbers, he also sees colors, sounds, and textures. He also mentioned how, when computing math problems in his head, he uses visual aids, such as grids, to help him complete the problem quickly and correctly without the help of a calculator or even paper. I found this incredibly interesting because synesthesia is something that I have heard of, but I know very little about. Hearing about how he associates numbers with abstract concepts was a way that I never though about synesthesia but the way that he explained is was easy to understand. I also liked how he started out the talk by telling about how, when most people meet him, they ask him to solve some math problem of tell them what day of the week they were born on based on their birthday. This gave the presentation a much more personal feel, as he proceeded to talk about the topic of synesthesia. I feel that this would greatly affect someone’s day to day life because they see things in ways that no one (or nearly no one) else does. Synesthesia seems like something that would enable someone to be far more creative. Seeing colors and textures when looking at numbers, for example, could open the door for much more creative ways to look at different things. Looking at things from all different angles is what, in my opinion, allows new ideas to form.  In day to day life, this would allow a person with synesthesia to bring new ideas to light.

--Original published at Site Title

For this weeks first impression post, I chose to watch the TED Talk that discussed synesthesia. When someone has Synesthesia, their perception of certain senses are linked to differing senses. For example, the man who spoke in the video shared his personal perception on the numbers one through twelve. With each number, he associates a different shape or symbol, and a color. He also shared some of his paintings that he associates with larger numbers and math problems.

When I was deciding which video to watch for this weeks post, I thought that this one would be the most interesting, and upon watching the video, I can say that my reaction to it was similar to what I had expected it to be. I was fascinated by what I was seeing and hearing. While I have heard of associating two differing senses with one another,  I did not know that someone could experience it to this extent.

As for how having the condition of synesthesia may affect someone’s day to day life, I cannot imagine. Though I obviously do not know what it is like to live with this condition, I would assume that it can be rather overwhelming at times. For example, in the video the man who lives with the condition used examples involving the elaborate images he has in his mind that he associates with larger math problems. Personally, I feel that I would be overwhelmed by all of the things I would have going through my head simultaneously, and I would likely just give up. I don’t think that I could concentrate on both the math problem, and the specific image all at once. The man in the video explained that this condition is very manageable when you are aware of it, but I believe that people who are unaware of their condition may struggle to complete tasks in their daily lives.

--Original published at Nadia's Blog

This week I watched the TED talk on “Different Ways of Knowing”, by Daniel Tammet. Daniel Tammet has Synesthesia, which is where he is able to see the world in a much richer and vaster way. He is able to see the world differently, and correlates words, numbers and sentences with colors, shapes and textures. He believed that different ways of perceiving, leads to different ways of knowing and understanding.

Tammet gave multiple examples of calculations, an Icelandic word,  and a poem, and showed the audience what he visualized when seeing this. I found it interesting that in my mind I saw a complex calculation, but in his mind he came up with a clever way to solve this by picturing a chess board. A majority of the audience guessed that the Icelandic word meant sad, which they happened to be correct. This raised an interesting point, Tammet discussed that sounds match the intuitive perception of the listener. The other example he showed of the poem stance was quite interesting, because each word was correlated to an image in his mind, and this allowed him to get a better understanding of the meaning behind the poem. Rather than visually recognizing the meaning from words, he was able to do this with a visual representation. He also showed other numbers such as the mathematical constant, pi. He showed how this number represented a landscape with many different colors. In his mind words can have personalities and colors.

I found this way of thinking and life, to be extremely interesting. I believe that this would heavily impact someone’s life because their way of thinking is completely different than a majority of people. Some people may not understand their point of view. I also think that being able to have this way of perception, would be a great advantage and tie meaning to learning which is semantic encoding, which is the most powerful and effective. I also think that this would make an individual pay attention to a lot more detail because they are relating it to a color or image in their minds. Overall, like Tammet had said, his way of life is much richer than other individuals because of his ability to see the world in so many colors, images and textures.