Wired News: Rainbow Coalition of the Brain

An interesting rport on the way that synaesthesia can help thinking tasks. Some readers may remember my drawing attention to synesthesia in relation to a mathematical savant who calculates very fast and describes his inner experience in terms of his own shapes of numbers blending and coming up with the right answer. I suspect that it might be that if we can work out what happens in casese like this we could be on the way to Frank Herbert's 'mentats' and all of us could have acesss to mental tools to improve our lives without fuelling more machines.

On a more specifically spritual or religious theme there is an interesting specualtion about auras and psychics too: "'The ability of some people to see the colored auras of others has held an important place in folklore and mysticism throughout the ages,' said Ward. 'Rather than assuming that people give off auras or energy fields that can only be detected by rigged cameras or trained seers, we need only assume that the phenomenon of synesthesia is taking place.'"

So there's another item in the apologetics storeroom. Wired News: Rainbow Coalition of the Brain: