Scientists actually read our articles

I just realized that my article "Are there unconscious perceptual processes?" is among the 25 most downloaded Consciousness and Cognition articles in 2011. So it seems that scientists actually read our articles.

Non-Visual Consciousness and Visual Images in Blindsight

Consciousness and Cognition recently published this response paper to my paper "Are there unconscious perceptual processes?". They have invited me to write a 1000 word reply. Here is a rough draft of my reply: Non-Visual Consciousness and Visual Images in Blindsight. Comments are welcome.

The Synnie Gang from Toward a Science of Consciousness in Stockholm, 2011

Group picture of the synesthesia geeks from Toward a Science of Consciousness in Stockholm, 2011. Back: Michael Sollberger, Engelbert Winkler, Dirk Proekl (hiding). Second row: Patricia Lynne Duffy, Jason Padgett, Berit Brogaard, Carrie C. Firman. Third row: Alexandra Kirschner, Nancy Clark. Front: Neil Theise, William C. Bushell, Maureen Seaberg. Thanks, Maureen, for organizing the workshop.

The Superhuman Mind

I am in beautiful Stockholm at the Toward a Science of Consciousness. Our session on Tuesday will take place in the fabulous Aula Magna Hall (see picture). Stop by if you are in the neighborhood. Danish National Radio will also broadcast a feature on this. Here is the title and abstract of my talk (for slides, click here). This is also the title of my next (academic) book.

The Superhuman Mind: From Synesthesia to Savant Syndrome

Savant syndrome is a condition in which a person has a talent that is so developed that he can perform what may seem like impossible mathematical, linguistic or artistic tasks. Blind Tom, a blind autistic slave in Georgia in the nineteenth century, was an amazing pianist and performer. Stephen Wiltshire drew an extremely accurate sketch of a four square mile section of London, including twelve major landmarks and two hundred other buildings after a twelve minute helicopter ride through the area. For any date you pick, the "human computers" Kay and Fro can report what they had for dinner, what they did on that day, what weekday it was, what their favorite TV-host wore on that day, and so on. Oliver Sack's autistic twins John and Michael computed prime numbers with more than 6 digits. The real rain man Kim Peeks was a living encyclopedia. There is currently no widely accepted explanation of the superhuman abilities of savants. What we do know is that most of them are synesthetes or autists and have left-brain injuries and particularly well-developed right-brain areas. Neurobiologist Stanislas Dehaene has proposed that savant synesthetes don't really differ that much from the rest of us. He claims that what distinguishes a mathematical genius from a normal person is an obsession with numbers and lots and lots of training. I provide empirical evidence against this hypothesis and offer a new theory of how savant synesthetes manage to complete ostensively impossible tasks.

New Synaesthesia Survey

I have uploaded a new synaesthesia survey to our synaesthesia page. The results of the survey will be used to improve the design of our synaesthesia studies at the University of Missouri, St. Louis.

If you are a synaestete, and you are interested in contributing to our ongoing synaesthesia studies, you can take our advanced synaesthesia survey by clicking below.

Click here to take our advanced synaesthesia survey

If you are interested in becoming a participant in our studies at the University of Missouri, St. Louis but you are not sure if you qualify, we have created a survey that will allow us to determine whether you do. The only required information is your email address. You do not have to be located in St. Louis to qualify.

Click here to take the basic survey

If you have migraine and synaesthesia, you can take our migraine survey by clicking here.

New Consciousness Paper

I have made my paper for the Syracuse SPAWN conference temporarily available here. I am sure it will undergo drastic changes after the conference.

Color Experience in Blindsight?

I have a new paper called "Color Experience in Blindsight?" It's a semi-protected link, so Google search engines won't pick up on it. If you are interested, please go ahead and take a look at it. The link will be fully public, when I am done making little alterations (very little, as the proofs are on their way).

About Color Vision

The distribution of cone types, types of cells in the retina that detect different wavelengths of light, varies greatly among different individuals, says University of Rochester professor David Williams. Williams and his team used a laser-based system to catch images of the retinas of living humans. While the study participants picked nearly the same "best example" of yellow from color samples, the cones that detect red, green and yellow were sometimes richly dispersed across the retina and sometimes barely present. The divergence was 40:1. "That points to some kind of normalization or auto-calibration mechanism [...] that balances the colors for you no matter what the hardware is", says team member Heidi Hofer. Read the rest of this article >>

Two Papers

I am back from the Pacific APA. In case you missed my talks (and care) I have posted links to them on my website here and here. The first link is to my comments from the author-meets-critics session on Uriah Kriegel's book Subjective Consciousness. The second link is to a very brief version of my paper on high-level properties in perception.