Training Synaesthesia: How To See Things Differently in Half an Hour a Day

Wu Wei Wu

Wu Wei Wu

Jedi Master
Here is the link: _https://anilkseth.wordpress.com/2014/11/27/training-synaesthesia-how-to-see-things-differently-in-half-an-hour-a-day/

I've been speaking to the writer, they've also been doing experiments to induce syaneasthesia via hypnosis, though without success so far. See here: _http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24829555

In the original experiment they did succeed in inducing synaesthesia. Here's the thing though, the big news nobody expected to see. The participants reported an increase in IQ of an average of 12 points. 12 points! That's phenomenal. I've never seen anything that contribute to comparable gains. Simply amazing.

Anil informed me that they are pursuing this, and other pathways. He also referred me to the work of Jamie Ward, see here: _http://www.gocognitive.net/interviews/jamie-ward-synesthesia

Enjoy!
 
Does nobody find this fascinating and consequential?

Some more of my thoughts: Increases in IQ point towards pattern reading ability. What is the connection between seeing/hearing/feeling colors everywhere and enhanced pattern recognition?

Can anyone say... hyper-kinetic?
 
Quote from the article at _https://anilkseth.wordpress.com/2014/11/27/training-synaesthesia-how-to-see-things-differently-in-half-an-hour-a-day/

There is a rather long history of attempts to train people to be synaesthetic. Perhaps the earliest example was by E.L. Kelly who in 1934 published a paper with the title: An experimental attempt to produce artificial chromaesthesia by the technique of the conditioned response. While this attempt failed (the paper says it is “a report of purely negative experimental findings”) things have now moved on.

More recent attempts, for instance the excellent work of Olympia Colizoli and colleagues in Amsterdam, have tried to mimic (grapheme-colour) synaesthesia by having people read books in which some of the letters are always coloured in with particular colours. They found that it was possible to train people to display some of the characteristics of synaesthesia, like being slower to name coloured letters when they were presented in a colour conflicting with the training (the ‘synaesthetic Stroop’ effect). But crucially, until now no study has found that training could lead to people actually reporting synaesthesia-like conscious experiences.

Our approach was based on brute force. We decided to dramatically increase the length and rigour of the training procedure that our (initially non-synaesthetic) volunteers undertook. Each of them (14 in all) came in to the lab for half-an-hour each day, five days a week, for nine weeks! On each visit they completed a selection of training exercises designed to cement specific associations between letters and colours.Crucially, we adapted the difficulty of the tasks to each volunteer and each training session, and we also gave them financial rewards for good performance. Over the nine-week regime, some of the easier tasks were dropped entirely, and other more difficult tasks were introduced. Our volunteers also had homework to do, like reading the coloured books. Our idea was that the training must always be challenging, in order to have a chance of working.

The results were striking. At the end of the nine-week exercise, our dedicated volunteers were tested for behavioural signs of synaesthesia, and – crucially – were also asked about their experiences, both inside and outside the lab. Behaviourally they all showed strong similarities with natural-born synaesthetes. This was most striking in measures of ‘consistency’, a test which requires repeated selection of the colour associated with a particular letter, from a palette of millions.

Natural-born synaesthetes show very high consistency: the colours they pick (for a given letter) are very close to each other in colour space, across repeated selections. This is important because consistency is very hard to fake. The idea is that synaesthetes can simply match a colour to their experienced ‘concurrent’, whereas non-synaesthetes have to rely on less reliable visual memory, or other strategies.

Our trained quasi-synaesthetes passed the consistency test with flying colours (so to speak). They also performed much like natural synaesthetes on a whole range of other behavioural tests, including synaesthetic stroop, and a ‘synaesthetic conditioning’ task which shows that trained colours can elicit automatic physiological responses, like increases in skin conductance. Most importantly, most (8/14) of our volunteers described colour experiences much like those of natural synaesthetes (only 2 reported no colour phenomenology at all). Strikingly, some of these experience took place even outside the lab:

“When I was walking into campus I glanced at the University of Sussex sign and the letters were coloured” [according to their trained associations]

Like natural synaesthetes, some of our volunteers seemed to experience the concurrent colour ‘out in the world’ while others experienced the colours more ‘in the head’:

“When I am looking at a letter I see them in the trained colours”

“When I look at the letter ‘p’ … its like the inside of my head is pink”

These results are very exciting, suggesting for the first time that with sufficient training, people can actually learn to see the world differently. Of course, since they are based on subjective reports about conscious experiences, they are also the hardest to independently verify. There is always the slight worry that our volunteers said what they thought we wanted to hear. Against this worry, we were careful to ensure that none of our volunteers knew the study was about synaesthesia (and on debrief, none of them did!). Also, similar ‘demand characteristic’ concerns could have affected other synaesthesia training studies, yet none of these led to descriptions of synaesthesia-like experiences.
Click to expand...

So they condition people to associate certain letters with certain colors. After the conditioning in the lab, people begin to see letters in real life in the color they were conditioned with when in reality, they were not of the same color, or see this color in "their head" when they read the letter meaning recalling the conditioned association.

Regarding IQ
Our results weren’t just about synaesthesia. A fascinating side effect was that our volunteers registered a dramatic increase in IQ, gaining an average of about 12 IQ points (compared to a control group which didn’t undergo training). We don’t yet know whether this increase was due to the specifically synaesthetic aspects of our regime, or just intensive cognitive training in general. Either way, our findings provide support for the idea that carefully designed cognitive training could enhance normal cognition, or even help remedy cognitive deficits or decline. More research is needed on these important questions.
Click to expand...

And in conclusion
So, yes, you can learn to see the world differently. To me, the most important aspect of this work is that it emphasizes that each of us inhabits our own distinctive conscious world. It may be tempting to think that while different people – maybe other cultures – have different beliefs and ways of thinking, still we all see the same external reality. But synaesthesia, along with other emerging theories of ‘predictive processing’ – shows that the differences go much deeper. We each inhabit our own personalised universe, albeit one which is partly defined and shaped by other people. So next time you think someone is off in their own little world: they are.
Click to expand...

In summary, they are generating conditioned sensory responses which may alter neural structures and take people away from a shared view of reality to "their own little world".

So I do not get how this is beneficial/fascinating. The consequences I see are harmful and worrying.
 
Wu Wei Wu said:
Does nobody find this fascinating and consequential?

Some more of my thoughts: Increases in IQ point towards pattern reading ability. What is the connection between seeing/hearing/feeling colors everywhere and enhanced pattern recognition?

Can anyone say... hyper-kinetic?
Click to expand...

Hello Wu Wei Wu, my thoughts echo those of obyvatel. I do find it fascinating, but I suspect that programming your brain to think in a certain way is just that - programming.

You can put glasses on a frog which invert the images it can see. The frog will eventually learn to navigate its way around based on its new programming. I don't see any great advantage to be had in this.

Now if you can get someone who is colour blind to recognise traffic lights on a wet rainy night, you might get my interest. There would be some value to be had in that.
 
In summary, they are generating conditioned sensory responses which may alter neural structures and take people away from a shared view of reality to "their own little world".

So I do not get how this is beneficial/fascinating. The consequences I see are harmful and worrying.
Click to expand...

Were there not explosive IQ benefits I would be in clear agreement. Like you said, it would encourage a kind of subjective awareness via programming that is harmful.

The key though, is the IQ increases, which may correlate with memory, spatial, visual, and logical gains in ability.

Here's what we know about Synaesthesia: Their neural wiring and brain behavior is abnormal. The question then is the following: For the purposes of experiencing and understanding objective reality, is their abnormality harmful and delusional or is it useful and objective?

Previous to seeing the gains, I would tend towards harmful for the same reasons. However, since natural Synaesthesates have this abnormality from birth and I don't know of any existing IQ studies into the average IQ of Synaesthesates, we don't actually know if this is the case. It's just a hypothesis relative to our aim, which is objectivity.

However an IQ gain of 12 points is phenomenal. In all the research I've seen I've never seen any kind of short term training result in that kind of explosive growth. And that's an average gain among participants; It may be that many subjects experienced substantially higher gains.

Now does increased IQ encourage greater perception of objective reality? I'm inclined to say it does in potential. Gaining knowledge is still required but it seems to me like having a better mental engine for which to learn.

There are a lot of unknowns with this research; they stumbled across this finding by accident and who knows if the Synaesthesia or the IQ gains will persist or what other changes might come along. But it certainly provokes questions. Maybe there is a 'color substance' to things in nature separate of the physical one? Records of various mystics certainly points to strange color perceptions.

Hence my interest. What seems at first a curious programming experience by association could have startling implications, especially for our collective learning.

As to IQ, most data shows that IQ tends to crystallize in adulthood and remain generally stable. I think the Work provides an environment for adult IQ to rise based on my own experience and what I've seen in other long term Work members, but that's all anecdotal. I'm inclined to trust my experience anyways, but there's little data I know of to justify significant IQ fluctuations like the one this study observed.

Now if you can get someone who is colour blind to recognise traffic lights on a wet rainy night, you might get my interest. There would be some value to be had in that.
Click to expand...

This would be a great application but I've no idea if it could be done. It would depend on whether colourblindness is a neural problem or eye problem. I thought it was an eye problem? Not certain.
 
There is considerable debate among researchers as to what IQ really measures and how important it is for life. As regards the traditional 4th Way Work, having a higher IQ could be a help or hindrance. IMO average IQ should be good enough for growth.

But coming back to the synesthesia research results reported above, there are a couple of things I noted. First, the researchers were not sure if the cognitive part of the training helped improve IQ scores. Second, and more important imo, they provided financial rewards to high performers . IQ research has shown that motivation plays an important role in how high a person scores.

_http://news.sciencemag.org/2011/04/what-does-iq-really-measure

A number of studies have found that subjects who are promised monetary rewards for doing well in IQ and other cognitive tests score significantly higher.
Click to expand...

Details can be found in the link above.
 
I don't find it particularly fascinating either, just another example of brain programming. Similar things happen when, say for instance, you start a new job working with widgets and for a while after starting this job you start to dream of widgets. Or you get a new car and start seeing that same model of car all over town. This experiment just seems to be conditioning the brain to recognize things that it didn't before. Nothing astounding.

And regarding the increase in IQ... I'm with obyvatel. How important is IQ really? Did the participants in this experiment experience any significant life improvement from this boost? Were they able to accomplish anything they weren't able to accomplish previously with an IQ that was 12 points lower?
 
Since the reported rise in IQ points was "the big news nobody expected to see", what exactly is the expected payoff driving these experiments?
 
Since the reported rise in IQ points was "the big news nobody expected to see", what exactly is the expected payoff driving these experiments?
Click to expand...

Hello Buddy. From what I remember there have been many, almost totally unsuccessful, attempts to produce artificial synaesthesates from everything from association to hypnosis. This is the first to succeed. I don't remember what the specific goal of what that study was. It was conducted by the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Essex, where Anil works. Link below:

_http://www.sussex.ac.uk/sackler/

Anil's group in particular studies Synaesthesia. I think the point was to see if it could be induced by training, which it was. How long it lasts I don't know; I emailed him recently, hopefully he'll respond and let me know how things have progressed.

There is considerable debate among researchers as to what IQ really measures and how important it is for life. As regards the traditional 4th Way Work, having a higher IQ could be a help or hindrance. IMO average IQ should be good enough for growth.
Click to expand...

There is considerable debate. Nonetheless IQ is strongly linked to everything from future income to crime rates to high/low time preferences. It seems to me a very important factor.

As to whether high IQ is a help or a hindrance, I totally agree: It COULD be a hindrance, but almost always it's a help. Whereas IQ is a proxy for mental ability, we can use general fitness to be a proxy for physical ability. We could say that fitness could be a hindrance, but no one would say it would be better to be unfit than fit, even from the standpoint of the work. The Work concerns itself with Objectivity, and there are Objective Goods for human beings like healthy mental and physical functioning.

Likewise increased IQ, if only as a proxy measuring more specific traits (like motivation or Grit), probably has a lot of value.

The financial gain point is a good one; It could be a confounding factor. But (I think) all subjects were adults, and adult IQ scores tend to be fairly stable over time. For example, various 'brain training' apps and programs seem to create few or no gains IQ wise despite hours of training.

I'm very curious about the data in the article. Did the meta-analysis include only adult participants or children as well, children being notoriously variable in score? Has anyone here read that study and the IQ literature, like the Bell Curve, and other related material? I've read into parts of the literature, but not as much as I'd like.

How important is IQ really? Did the participants in this experiment experience any significant life improvement from this boost? Were they able to accomplish anything they weren't able to accomplish previously with an IQ that was 12 points lower?
Click to expand...

These are the million dollar questions. From all the correlations with General Life Success and IQ, it seems important. Obviously it's not sufficient for success in aim alone, as grit/motivation plays a huge part.

We could look at this backwards; Do we have record of astounding scientific breakthroughs or amazing works of art, literature, or otherwise, by people of average IQ, or lesser IQ? Genius biographies are plentiful and I don't think that's a coincidence.

Regardless I'm inquiring into all your questions Odyssey. Maybe the IQ gains don't last, or maybe the gains and Synaesthesia together have a detrimental, rather than positive, effect on subjects lives. I don't know. I suspect they don't either yet, but its worth asking about.

PS. My assumption here, so that they are crystal clear, are based on my own research, discussions, and experiences with IQ as a subject. My assumption is, as described above, is that IQ is a proxy for having a better functioning mental engine, which is why I think this study was worth my interest.
 
Hi Wu Wei Wu, I don't yet see how to validate a relationship between synaesthesia and boosted IQ because the article also says, "We don’t yet know whether this increase was due to the specifically synaesthetic aspects of our regime, or just intensive cognitive training in general." Maybe they need to add a control group that gets an equivalent intensive cognitive training for comparison with the synaesthesia group. Don't know that they'd do that, though, since it might divert them from a stated goal of looking for the brain basis of consciousness.
 
Buddy said:
Hi Wu Wei Wu, I don't yet see how to validate a relationship between synaesthesia and boosted IQ because the article also says, "We don’t yet know whether this increase was due to the specifically synaesthetic aspects of our regime, or just intensive cognitive training in general." Maybe they need to add a control group that gets an equivalent intensive cognitive training for comparison with the synaesthesia group. Don't know that they'd do that, though, since it might divert them from a stated goal of looking for the brain basis of consciousness.
Click to expand...

That's right. Everything needs to be tested more carefully.

Though remember, the cognitive training was not intended to increase IQ. It was not done for that purpose. It was done to induce Synaesthesia.

So whats the link between the induction method, Synaesthesia, and increased IQ? We don't know. But I'm really curious about it.

Take those brain games like Lumosity. In practice they have little to no ability to improve IQ. Most training to enhance IQ has failed miserably. And yet here comes accidental reading (and thats what subjects were doing, reading and homework) that catapults them a standard deviation up? Seems like a valuable line of inquiry to me.
 
Wu Wei Wu said:
Since the reported rise in IQ points was "the big news nobody expected to see", what exactly is the expected payoff driving these experiments?
Click to expand...
[snip]
How important is IQ really? Did the participants in this experiment experience any significant life improvement from this boost? Were they able to accomplish anything they weren't able to accomplish previously with an IQ that was 12 points lower?
Click to expand...
[snip]
PS. My assumption here, so that they are crystal clear, are based on my own research, discussions, and experiences with IQ as a subject. My assumption is, as described above, is that IQ is a proxy for having a better functioning mental engine, which is why I think this study was worth my interest.
Click to expand...

I think this study is important, thank you Wu Wei Wu for bringing it up.
I believe it is imperative to first find out what exactly happens and where, before crying out "mind programming, BAD". Also, the focus on "IQ boosting" is way beside the point.
Yes, Wu Wei Wu, IQ is a proxy. As you mention, IQ tests and their meaning and utility have always been the subject of debate, but that should not be the point here.
Standard IQ tests are mainly focused on measuring certain abilities of the subject such as associative "thinking", "thinking" by analogy, "thinking" by patterns. However, "thinking" is the wrong term here. IMO and as you point out, these activities are unconscious, like a "mental engine" which is in constant operation and continually delivers "indicators" to the conscious mind (if the conscious mind is able and willing to listen).
My conjecture (and pardon the approximate terminology) is that during the 9-week experiment, this "engine" has been exercised with a small training set. Think of a toy: a wooden set of pegs-and-holes for toddlers, or the ubiquitous shapes and shaped holes kit.
After intensive training with this small set, the subjects became very proficient at the game proper, so much that the "solutions" became so to speak a second nature: out in the real world they presented themselves automatically, separate from any thought process.
We could say that the "engine" became well-oiled and "fit" to associate, to recognize this particular set of relations.

So far so good. But what the IQ test results suggest is that more than that, after the training the engine performed better generally, i.e. became better in recognizing and flagging any other associative relationships, analogies and patterns.

There's far more to this, but let me stay brief: IMO this is very relevant to so many aspects of our lives, many discussed on this forum: habits good and bad; addictions; recognising psychopaths; separating wheat from chaff; creativity; alertness etc.
Also, for whatever reason :) I am reminded of a recent session with the C's where they suggested something like "rewiring the brain connections". Funny, I noticed no or very little reaction from the crew to this, for me, huge hint.
FWIW as always,
-A
 
Wu Wei Wu said:
Though remember, the cognitive training was not intended to increase IQ. It was not done for that purpose. It was done to induce Synaesthesia.
Click to expand...

Point taken. :)

Wu Wei Wu said:
So whats the link between the induction method, Synaesthesia, and increased IQ? We don't know. But I'm really curious about it.
Click to expand...

Pre-loaded pattern recognition circuits?

I do seem to see connections to a richer network of information and I'm still curious as to why, historically, so much attention has been paid to this. For example, Scientific American lists 6042 search results for "hearing colors tasting shapes" going back to 2003.

The Russian painter and art theorist, Kandinsky is believed to be synaesthetic. If so, his paintings might be said to represent sensory blends, if that's the right way to say it (_http://www.theartstory.org/artist-kandinsky-wassily-artworks.htm#pnt_5) <<-- Loved it when he described an experience of a sunset in Moscow.

Fortunately the scientific method accepts no permanent solution, and so we now have the field of neurogenesis which is demonstrating that the brain can grow new neurons under the right conditions. Maybe that's a key?
 
The Russian painter and art theorist, Kandinsky is believed to be synaesthetic. If so, his paintings might be said to represent sensory blends, if that's the right way to say it (_http://www.theartstory.org/artist-kandinsky-wassily-artworks.htm#pnt_5) <<-- Loved it when he described an experience of a sunset in Moscow.
Click to expand...

Beautiful stuff isn't it.
The question is was Kandinsky seeing more of the world (4D bleedthrough?) or less of it (subjective delusions) by being synaesthetic? It's abundantly clear that Synaesthesia in itself is great for art.

I suspect it is a case of neural rewiring but the specifics of how and why that works are totally opaque to me.

Pre-loaded pattern recognition circuits?

I do seem to see connections to a richer network of information and I'm still curious as to why, historically, so much attention has been paid to this. For example, Scientific American lists 6042 search results for "hearing colors tasting shapes" going back to 2003.
Click to expand...

Could be. Maybe the intensive practice and new neural network other related verbal or spatial tasks much easier? We don't know if the subjects IQ spiked in just one area or if they did so across the board,, so its hard to say.

As to Synaesthesia, its fascinating because it's a different way to view the world that is not debilitating and, in many cases, can be supplementary to healthy life by providing, as you say, a 'richer network of information'.

This is one reason I think it may be a clue to something more important.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom