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Dacher Keltner explains how compassion is literally at our fingertips.

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The woman had seen lions and monkeys in her house. She was becoming disoriented and aggressive towards others, and was convinced that her husband was an impostor. She was in her mid-50s - decades older than the age at which psychosis typically develops - and had no psychiatric history. What she did have, however, was COVID-19. Hers was one of the first known cases of someone developing psychosis after contracting the disease.

In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors struggled to keep patients breathing, and focused mainly on treating damage to the lungs and circulatory system. But even then, evidence for neurological effects was accumulating. Some people hospitalized with COVID-19 were experiencing delirium: they were confused, disorientated and agitated. In April, a group in Japan published the first report of someone with COVID-19 who had swelling and inflammation in brain tissues. Another report described a patient with deterioration of myelin, a fatty coating that protects neurons and is irreversibly damaged in neurodegenerative diseases such as multiple sclerosis.

"The neurological symptoms are only becoming more and more scary," says Alysson Muotri, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, in La Jolla.

The list now includes stroke, brain haemorrhage and memory loss. It is not unheard of for serious diseases to cause such effects, but the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic means that thousands or even tens of thousands of people could already have these symptoms, and some might be facing lifelong problems as a result.

Yet researchers are struggling to answer key questions - including basic ones, such as how many people have these conditions, and who is at risk. Most importantly, they want to know why these particular symptoms are showing up.

Although viruses can invade and infect the brain, it is not clear whether SARS-CoV-2 does so to a significant extent. The neurological symptoms might instead be a result of overstimulation of the immune system. It is crucial to find out, because these two scenarios require entirely different treatments. "That's why the disease mechanisms are so important," says Benedict Michael, a neurologist at the University of Liverpool, UK.

Affected brains

As the pandemic ramped up, Michael and his colleagues were among many scientists who began compiling case reports of neurological complications linked to COVID-19.

In a June paper, he and his team analysed clinical details for 125 people in the United Kingdom with COVID-19 who had neurological or psychiatric effects. Of these, 62% had experienced damage to the brain's blood supply, such as strokes and haemorrhages, and 31% had altered mental states, such as confusion or prolonged unconsciousness - sometimes accompanied by encephalitis, the swelling of brain tissue. Ten people who had altered mental states developed psychosis.

Not all people with neurological symptoms have been seriously ill in intensive-care units, either. "We've seen this group of younger people without conventional risk factors who are having strokes, and patients having acute changes in mental status that are not otherwise explained," says Michael.

A similar study published in July compiled detailed case reports of 43 people with neurological complications from COVID-19. Some patterns are becoming clear, says Michael Zandi, a neurologist at University College London and a lead author on the study. The most common neurological effects are stroke and encephalitis. The latter can escalate to a severe form called acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, in which both the brain and spinal cord become inflamed and neurons lose their myelin coatings - leading to symptoms resembling those of multiple sclerosis. Some of the worst-affected patients had only mild respiratory symptoms. "This was the brain being hit as their main disease," says Zandi.

Less common complications include peripheral nerve damage, typical of Guillain-Barré syndrome, and what Zandi calls "a hodgepodge of things", such as anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. Similar symptoms have been seen in outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), also caused by coronaviruses. But fewer people were infected in those outbreaks, so less data are available.

How many people?

Clinicians don't know how common these neurological effects are. Another study published in July estimated their prevalence using data from other coronaviruses. Symptoms affecting the central nervous system occurred in at least 0.04% of people with SARS and in 0.2% of those with MERS. Given that there are now 28.2 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide, this could imply that between 10,000 and 50,000 people have experienced neurological complications.

But a major problem in quantifying cases is that clinical studies have typically focused on people with COVID-19 who were hospitalized, often those who required intensive care. The prevalence of neurological symptoms in this group could be "more than 50%", says neurobiologist Fernanda De Felice at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. But there is much less information about those who had mild illness or no respiratory symptoms.

That scarcity of data means it is difficult to work out why some people have neurological symptoms and others do not. It is also unclear whether the effects will linger: COVID-19 can have other health impacts that last for months, and different coronaviruses have left some people with symptoms for years.

Infection or inflammation?

The most pressing question for many neuroscientists, however, is why the brain is affected at all. Although the pattern of disorders is fairly consistent, the underlying mechanisms are not yet clear, says De Felice.

Finding an answer will help clinicians to choose the right treatments. "If this is direct viral infection of the central nervous system, these are the patients we should be targeting for remdesivir or another antiviral," says Michael. "Whereas if the virus is not in the central nervous system, maybe the virus is clear of the body, then we need to treat with anti-inflammatory therapies."

Getting it wrong would be harmful. "It's pointless giving the antivirals to someone if the virus is gone, and it's risky giving anti-inflammatories to someone who's got a virus in their brain," says Michael.

There is clear evidence that SARS-CoV-2 can infect neurons. Muotri's team specializes in building 'organoids' - miniaturized clumps of brain tissue, made by coaxing human pluripotent stem cells to differentiate into neurons.

In a May preprint, the team showed that SARS-CoV-2 could infect neurons in these organoids, killing some and reducing the formation of synapses between them. Work by immunologist Akiko Iwasaki and her colleagues at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, seems to confirm this using human organoids, mouse brains and some post-mortem examinations, according to a preprint published on 8 September. But questions remain over how the virus might reach people's brains.

Because loss of smell is a common symptom, neurologists wondered whether the olfactory nerve might provide a route of entry. "Everyone was concerned that this was a possibility," says Michael. But the evidence points against it.

A team led by Mary Fowkes, a pathologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, posted a preprint in late May describing post mortems in 67 people who had died of COVID-19. "We have seen the virus in the brain itself," says Fowkes: electron microscopes revealed its presence. But virus levels were low and were not consistently detectable. Furthermore, if the virus was invading through the olfactory nerve, the associated brain region should be the first to be affected. "We're simply not seeing the virus involved in the olfactory bulb," says Fowkes. Rather, she says, infections in the brain are small and tend to cluster around blood vessels.

Michael agrees that the virus is hard to find in the brain, compared with other organs. Tests using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) often do not detect it there, despite their high sensitivity, and several studies have failed to find any virus particles in the cerebrospinal fluid that surrounds the brain and spinal cord (see, for example, ref. 10). One reason might be that the ACE2 receptor, a protein on human cells that the virus uses to gain entry, is not expressed much in brain cells.

"It seems to be incredibly rare that you get viral central nervous system infection," Michael says. That means many of the problems clinicians are seeing are probably a result of the body's immune system fighting the virus.

Still, this might not be true in all cases, which means that researchers will need to identify biomarkers that can reliably distinguish between a viral brain infection and immune activity. That, for now, means more clinical research, post mortems and physiological studies.

De Felice says that she and her colleagues are planning to follow patients who have recovered after intensive care, and create a biobank of samples including cerebrospinal fluid. Zandi says that similar studies are beginning at University College London. Researchers will no doubt be sorting through such samples for years. Although the questions they're addressing have come up during nearly every disease outbreak, COVID-19 presents new challenges and opportunities, says Michael. "What we haven't had since 1918 is a pandemic on this scale."

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The woman had seen lions and monkeys in her house. She was becoming disoriented and aggressive towards others, and was convinced that her husband was an impostor. She was in her mid-50s - decades older than the age at which psychosis typically develops - and had no psychiatric history.

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What part of the brain does art stimulate ?

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Art Enhances Brain Function and Well-Being

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There is an increasing amount of scientific evidence that proves art enhances brain function. It has an impact on brain wave patterns and emotions, the nervous system, and can actually raise serotonin levels. Art can change a person's outlook and the way they experience the world.

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Music can be medicine for your mind, with benefits from memory improvement to stress relief.

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A recent study by New York University neuroscientists has found that watching certain films affects brain activity more than others.

The study has been such a success that the film industry may use the findings when making its own movies.

Published in 'Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind' - no, we haven't heard of it either - the researchers wrote: "In cinema, some films lead most viewers through a similar sequence of perceptual, emotional, and cognitive states.

"Such a tight grip on viewers' minds will be reflected in the similarity of the brain activity across most viewers.

"By contrast, other films exert - either intentionally or unintentionally - less control over viewers' responses during movie watching. In such cases we expect that there will be less control over viewers' brain activity."
The films profiled
So, which films made people's brains hurt and which made them brain dead? The researchers used three motion picture clips: a half-hour segment of Sergio Leone's T he Good, The Bad And The Ugly; an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents Bang! You're Dead; and an episode of Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Hitchcock's effort proved the most worthy when livening 65 per cent of the brain's neocortex, while Larry David proved to be the worst brain-livener, as it mustered up just 18 per cent neocortex activity.

Those who watched a clip of McG's Charlie's Angels were officially declared braindead. Actually, we just made that last bit up, but if it was in the study we're sure that would have been the result.

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A recent study by New York University neuroscientists has found that watching certain films affects brain activity more than others. The study has been such a success that the film industry may use the findings when making its own movies.

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Study Evaluating Effects Of Red Light On Degeneration

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Study Evaluating Effects Of Red Light On Degeneration

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how red light may help improve visual decline

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Your access to the NCBI website at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov has been temporarily blocked due to a possible misuse/abuse situation involving your site. This is not an indication of a security issue such as a virus or attack.

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what makes older people wiser than the young

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Credit... Yarek Waszul

When older people can no longer remember names at a cocktail party, they tend to think that their brainpower is declining. But a growing number of studies suggest that this assumption is often wrong.

Instead, the research finds, the aging brain is simply taking in more data and trying to sift through a clutter of information, often to its long-term benefit.

The studies are analyzed in a new edition of a neurology book, "Progress in Brain Research."

Some brains do deteriorate with age. Alzheimer's disease, for example, strikes 13 percent of Americans 65 and older. But for most aging adults, the authors say, much of what occurs is a gradually widening focus of attention that makes it more difficult to latch onto just one fact, like a name or a telephone number. Although that can be frustrating, it is often useful.

"It may be that distractibility is not, in fact, a bad thing," said Shelley H. Carson, a psychology researcher at Harvard whose work was cited in the book. "It may increase the amount of information available to the conscious mind."

For example, in studies where subjects are asked to read passages that are interrupted with unexpected words or phrases, adults 60 and older work much more slowly than college students. Although the students plow through the texts at a consistent speed regardless of what the out-of-place words mean, older people slow down even more when the words are related to the topic at hand. That indicates that they are not just stumbling over the extra information, but are taking it in and processing it.

When both groups were later asked questions for which the out-of-place words might be answers, the older adults responded much better than the students.

"For the young people, it's as if the distraction never happened," said an author of the review, Lynn Hasher, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and a senior scientist at the Rotman Research Institute. "But for older adults, because they've retained all this extra data, they're now suddenly the better problem solvers. They can transfer the information they've soaked up from one situation to another."

Such tendencies can yield big advantages in the real world, where it is not always clear what information is important, or will become important. A seemingly irrelevant point or suggestion in a memo can take on new meaning if the original plan changes. Or extra details that stole your attention, like others' yawning and fidgeting, may help you assess the speaker's real impact.

"A broad attention span may enable older adults to ultimately know more about a situation and the indirect message of what's going on than their younger peers," Dr. Hasher said. "We believe that this characteristic may play a significant role in why we think of older people as wiser."

In a 2003 study at Harvard, Dr. Carson and other researchers tested students' ability to tune out irrelevant information when exposed to a barrage of stimuli. The more creative the students were thought to be, determined by a questionnaire on past achievements, the more trouble they had ignoring the unwanted data. A reduced ability to filter and set priorities, the scientists concluded, could contribute to original thinking.

This phenomenon, Dr. Carson said, is often linked to a decreased activity in the prefrontal cortex. Studies have found that people who suffered an injury or disease that lowered activity in that region became more interested in creative pursuits.

Jacqui Smith, a professor of psychology and research professor at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, who was not involved in the current research, said there was a word for what results when the mind is able to assimilate data and put it in its proper place — wisdom.

"These findings are all very consistent with the context we're building for what wisdom is," she said. "If older people are taking in more information from a situation, and they're then able to combine it with their comparatively greater store of general knowledge, they're going to have a nice advantage."

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Older Brain Really May Be a Wiser Brain (Published 2008)

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When older people can no longer remember names at a cocktail party, they tend to think that their brainpower is declining. But a growing number of studies suggest that this assumption is often wrong. Instead, the research finds, the aging brain is simply taking in more data and trying to sift through a clutter of information, often to its long-term benefit.

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Science Of 3-D Movies: How Do Images On A Flat Screen Pop Out?

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Science Of 3-D Movies: How Do Images On A Flat Screen Pop Out?

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How 3D films work

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The basis for 3-D movies is that they try to mimic the stereoscopic capabilities of human eyes. The cameras used for shooting 3-D films have 2 lenses placed adjacent to each other, closely resembling a pair of human eyes. Alternatively, movies shot using regular 2-D cameras can be converted to 3-D in post-production using special 2-D to 3-D conversion software.

We're in the Golden Age of summer blockbuster cinema right now, but realistically, this is just the beginning. Every new action-heavy, "genre" film (think superhero, fantasy, adventure films) seems to get the 3-D treatment these days - something that was extremely rare even a decade ago. The film that really set the bar in terms of 3-D was Avatar (2009), which went on to become the highest-grossing film worldwide. Since then, movies have continued to take advantage of this new technology, perhaps due to a combination of enhancing the movie-watching experience and increasing their earnings.

So, what exactly does watching a movie in 3-D involve? What is it about this fascinating technology that entices movie-going audiences around the world?
Recommended Video for you:
The Basics

3-D, as we know, stands for 3-dimensional. Anything that has length, width and height is considered to have 3 dimensions. When we talk about a 3-D film, however, we refer to one of those dimensions as "depth". The more depth an object has on-screen, the more real it seems to us, thereby enhancing our viewing experience.

As human beings, we have incredible depth perception. Because our eyes are slightly set apart, each eye has a slightly different perspective of what we're looking at. Therefore, our retinas (layer of our eyes upon which light is received) form two different 2-dimensional images, which are instantly pieced together by our brain to form a 3-dimensional picture of the world around us. This is known as s tereopsis or stereoscopic vision.

How Movies Accomplish This

Essentially, movies try to mimic the stereoscopic capabilities of human eyes. The cameras used for shooting 3-D films have 2 lenses placed adjacent to each other, closely resembling a pair of human eyes. Alternatively, movies shot using regular 2-D cameras can be converted to 3-D in post-production using special 2-D to 3-D conversion software. Visual effects would have to be created using computer-generated imagery (CGI) to accomplish the same effect (animated 3-D films are produced in a similar fashion).

This arrangement enables two sets of images to be captured, each with a slightly different perspective. In the cinema, both sets of images are projected simultaneously onto the screen. Now, all that needs to be done is for our eyes to merge those two images into one, 3-dimensional picture. This is where those 3-D glasses come in.

3-D Technology

Traditionally, each lens of the camera had a different color filter. The lens capturing images meant for the left eye would have a red filter and the lens doing the same for the right eye would have a blue/cyan filter. This produced two different-colored images that, upon being projected on the screen simultaneously, could be viewed as one stereoscopic image using red-cyan glasses (I'm sure this is the most common version that springs to mind at the mention of "3-D glasses").

Due to their use of the same two opposing colors used as filter lenses to capture the images, each lens of the anaglyph 3-D glasses allows only the corresponding color image into the eye. Therefore, each eye is viewing a different perspective of the virtual object, similar to how a real object would be viewed. This stereoscopic 3-D effect is known as anaglyph 3-D.

However, there was a downside to the anaglyph 3-D method, namely that a movie could not be captured and viewed in full color. This finally brings us to the most popular and ultra-modern 3-D technology used by leaders in the field, such as IMAX.

It's All About Polar Opposites

Instead of projecting red and blue light onto the screen, modern projection techniques use polarized light. Here, the two images are projected through oppositely polarized filters in the cinema. One is horizontally polarized and the other is vertically polarized. Some projectors even use clockwise and counterclockwise polarization for the same purpose.

Polarized 3-D glasses allow only one of the images into each eye, using similarly polarized lenses, and our brain does the rest by fusing the two images together to form one 3-dimensional image with the requisite depth.

3-D movies have both a fascinating history and some impressive science behind them. It's exciting to see how the technology has changed and advanced through the ages and how it will improve even further in the future.

Suggested Reading

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Science Of 3-D Movies: How Do Images On A Flat Screen Pop Out?

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The basis for 3-D movies is that they try to mimic the stereoscopic capabilities of human eyes. The cameras used for shooting 3-D films have 2 lenses placed adjacent to each other, closely resembling a pair of human eyes. Alternatively, movies shot using regular 2-D cameras can be converted to 3-D in post-production using special 2-D to 3-D conversion software.

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To the Editor:

Re " Mind Over Mass Media " (Op-Ed, June 11):

Steven Pinker is correct in pointing out that innovations in technology are not making us less smart. And he is also correct that we need to curb our appetites for media that are becoming more and more immediate all the time.

But his emphasis on the mechanics of the brain slights the critical importance of face-to-face contact and talk between people. Surfing and Twittering in cyberspace preclude our talking with one another to maintain our social connectedness to the real world.

Nowhere is interpersonal connection more important than in our contact with infants and young children. Regardless of how much emphasis theories of the developing mind and theories of language acquisition place on our genes and biologically determined cognitive capacities, no theories dispute the critical importance to young children of hearing talk directed to them about what they see and do. They cannot learn language without it. Parents and caregivers plugged into their devices cannot provide such talk.

Lois Bloom
Easton, Conn., June 11, 2010
The writer is professor emeritus of psychology and education at Teachers College, Columbia University.
*

To the Editor:

Steven Pinker's article and the headline "Mind Over Mass Media" eloquently capture what many of us have believed for years.

Myths of widespread media effects are pervasive, and the perceived effects are invariably negative. Media are believed to depress reading scores, not to increase them. The Internet is said to decrease attention spans, rather than expand cognitive acuity. The ability of the human mind to reject or interpret or question media fare is rarely acknowledged.

People would be less likely to buy into myths of media impact if they asked themselves two simple questions: Has my mind been affected adversely by what I have seen or heard in the media? And if not, why do I assume that other people were harmed by what they saw or heard?

Richard M. Perloff
Cleveland, June 11, 2010
The writer is professor and director, School of Communication, Cleveland State University.
*

To the Editor:

It is fashionable among those who celebrate technology to equate concerns about new media to so-called moral panics of earlier eras. But surely Steven Pinker does not really believe that the Internet and wireless revolutions are comparable to a rise in comic book readership among adolescent boys in the 1950s.

Given the ways our culture has been radically transformed in such a short period of time, it is not surprising that so many are concerned about the effect of this transformation on our relationships, our knowledge and our sense of self. Are we happier? What happens to friendship and community when so many of our interactions are mediated through screens?

And what does it mean when so much of our time is spent with technologies whose underlying purpose is to get us to consume more of advertisers' products, particularly at a time of environmental crisis that requires drastic changes to our consumption habits?

If pausing to consider these questions is the equivalent of moral panic, I guess you can color me panicked.

Josh Golin
Associate Director, Campaign
for a Commercial-Free Childhood
Boston, June 11, 2010

*

To the Editor:

Steven Pinker is correct: we shouldn't overreact to new forms of media. But if we are to accept his premise that "the constant arrival of information packets can be distracting or addictive," then to simply advocate for "self-control" is to miss the mark.

We have seen that similar calls do not sufficiently reduce obesity, hypertension, diabetes and other health problems. Rather, let us at least suggest what should be self-evident: that some facets of the "new media" are likely to interfere with the formation of good study and work habits, and with some kinds of creativity.

Yes, people need to put away their toys to concentrate on a given task. But let us be constructive by occasionally explaining the whys and suggesting some hows. Tony László

Tokyo, June 13, 2010

*

To the Editor:

Steven Pinker writes that modern scientists "rarely touch paper and cannot lecture without PowerPoint." Quite the opposite is true in physics, where people lecture with chalk, calculate with pencils and print out papers they find online to read them.

Stephen Serene
Cambridge, Mass., June 11, 2010
The writer is an undergraduate in the department of physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Opinion | Is Technology Unhinging Our Brains? (Published 2010)

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To the Editor: Re " Mind Over Mass Media " (Op-Ed, June 11): Steven Pinker is correct in pointing out that innovations in technology are not making us less smart. And he is also correct that we need to curb our appetites for media that are becoming more and more immediate all the time.

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A Majority of Teens Have Experienced Some Form of cyber bullying  

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A Majority of Teens Have Experienced Some Form of cyber bullying  

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The different types of cyber bullying

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Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech

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For the latest survey data on teens and cyberbullying, see "Teens and Cyberbullying 2022."
Name-calling and rumor-spreading have long been an unpleasant and challenging aspect of adolescent life. But the proliferation of smartphones and the rise of social media has transformed where, when and how bullying takes place. A new Pew Research Center survey finds that 59% of U.S. teens have personally experienced at least one of six types of abusive online behaviors.

The most common type of harassment youth encounter online is name-calling. Some 42% of teens say they have been called offensive names online or via their cellphone. Additionally, about a third (32%) of teens say someone has spread false rumors about them on the internet, while smaller shares have had someone other than a parent constantly ask where they are, who they're with or what they're doing (21%) or have been the target of physical threats online (16%).

While texting and digital messaging are a central way teens build and maintain relationships, this level of connectivity may lead to potentially troubling and nonconsensual exchanges. One-quarter of teens say they have been sent explicit images they didn't ask for, while 7% say someone has shared explicit images of them without their consent. These experiences are particularly concerning to parents. Fully 57% of parents of teens say they worry about their teen receiving or sending explicit images, including about one-quarter who say this worries them a lot, according to a separate Center survey of parents.

The vast majority of teens (90% in this case) believe online harassment is a problem that affects people their age, and 63% say this is a major problem. But majorities of young people think key groups, such as teachers, social media companies and politicians are failing at tackling this issue. By contrast, teens have a more positive assessment of the way parents are addressing cyberbullying.

These are some of the key findings from the Center's surveys of 743 teens and 1,058 parents living in the U.S. conducted March 7 to April 10, 2018. Throughout the report, "teens" refers to those ages 13 to 17, and "parents of teens" are those who are the parent or guardian of someone in that age range.

Similar shares of boys and girls have been harassed online - but girls are more likely to be the targets of online rumor-spreading or nonconsensual explicit messages

When it comes to the overall findings on the six experiences measured in this survey, teenage boys and girls are equally likely to experience cyberbullying. However, there are some differences in the specific types of harassment they encounter.

Overall, 60% of girls and 59% of boys have experienced at least one of six abusive online behaviors. While similar shares of boys and girls have encountered abuse, such as name-calling or physical threats online, other forms of cyberbullying are more prevalent among girls. Some 39% of girls say someone has spread false rumors about them online, compared with 26% of boys who say this.

Girls also are more likely than boys to report being the recipient of explicit images they did not ask for (29% vs. 20%). And being the target of these types of messages is an especially common experience for older girls: 35% of girls ages 15 to 17 say they have received unwanted explicit images, compared with about one-in-five boys in this age range and younger teens of both genders.

Online harassment does not necessarily begin and end with one specific behavior, and 40% of teens have experienced two or more of these actions. Girls are more likely than boys to have experienced several different forms of online bullying, however. Some 15% of teen girls have been the target of at least four of these online behaviors, compared with 6% of boys.

In addition to these gender differences, teens from lower-income families are more likely than those from higher-income families to encounter certain forms of online bullying. For example, 24% of teens whose household income is less than $30,000 a year say they have been the target of physical threats online, compared with 12% whose annual household income is $75,000 or more. However, teens' experiences with these issues do not statistically differ by race or ethnicity, or by their parent's level of educational attainment. (For details on experiences with online bullying by different demographic groups, see Appendix A.)

The likelihood of teens facing abusive behavior also varies by how often teens go online. Some 45% of teens say they are online almost constantly, and these constant users are more likely to face online harassment. Fully 67% of teens who are online almost constantly have been cyberbullied, compared with 53% of those who use the internet several times a day or less. These differences also extend to specific kinds of behaviors. For example, half of teens who are near-constant internet users say they have been called offensive names online, compared with about a third (36%) who use the internet less frequently.

A majority of teens think parents are doing a good job at addressing online harassment, but smaller shares think other groups are handling this issue effectively

Today, school officials, tech companies and lawmakers are looking for ways to combat cyberbullying. Some schools have implemented policies that punish students for harassing messages even when those exchanges occur off campus. Anti-bullying tools are being rolled out by social media companies, and several states have enacted laws prohibiting cyberbullying and other forms of electronic harassment. In light of these efforts, Pew Research Center asked young people to rate how key groups are responding to cyberbullying and found that teens generally are critical of the way this problem is being addressed.

Indeed, teens rate the anti-bullying efforts of five of the six groups measured in the survey more negatively than positively. Parents are the only group for which a majority of teens (59%) express a favorable view of their efforts.

Young people have an especially negative view of the way politicians are tackling the issue of cyberbullying - 79% of teens say elected officials are doing only a fair or poor job of addressing this problem. And smaller majorities have unfavorable views of how groups such as social media sites (66%), other users who witness harassment happening online (64%) or teachers (58%) are addressing harassment and cyberbullying.

Teens' views on how well each of these groups is handling this issue vary little by their own personal experiences with cyberbullying - that is, bullied teens are no more critical than their non-bullied peers. And teens across various demographic groups tend to have a similar assessment of how these groups are addressing online harassment.

About six-in-ten parents worry about their own teen getting bullied online, but most are confident they can teach their teen about acceptable online behavior

Parents believe they can provide their teen with the appropriate advice to make good online decisions. Nine-in-ten parents say they are at least somewhat confident they can teach their teen how to engage in appropriate online behavior, including 45% who say they are very confident in their ability to do so.

But even as most parents are confident they can educate their child about proper online conduct, notable shares are concerned about the types of negative experiences their teen might encounter online. Roughly six-in-ten parents say they worry at least somewhat about their teen being harassed or bullied online (59%) or sending or receiving explicit images (57%). In each case, about one-in-four parents say they worry a lot about one of these things happening to their child.

These parental concerns tend to vary by race and ethnicity, as well as by a child's gender. Among parents, whites and Hispanics are more likely than blacks to say they worry about their teen being cyberbullied. Hispanic parents also are more inclined than black parents to say they worry about their child exchanging explicit images. At the same time, parents of teen girls are somewhat more likely than those with a teenage boy to say they worry about their teen being bullied online (64% vs. 54%) or exchanging explicit images (64% vs. 51%). (For details on these parental concerns by demographic group, see Appendix A.)

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A Majority of Teens Have Experienced Some Form of Cyberbullying

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59% of U.S. teens have been bullied or harassed online, and a similar share says it's a major problem for people their age. At the same time, teens mostly think teachers, social media companies and politicians are failing at addressing this issue.

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Psychiatric Times

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Plastic changes in the brain have been difficult to study in humans, but there has been more success in animal studies. Changes in the brain in relation to experience have been detected at the cellular and molecular levels in animals using different experimental approaches. The advent of functional neuroimaging, including single photon emission CT (SPECT), positron emission tomography (PET), and functional MRI, has made it possible to study changes at the brain systems level (by measuring changes in brain blood flow or metabolisms) and, increasingly, also on the molecular level using SPECT and PET in the living human brain.
Brain system level studies on the effects of psychotherapy
So far, nearly 20 studies on brain changes after psychotherapy for depression, anxiety disorders, and borderline personality disorder have been published (Table). The first study was published nearly 20 years ago, in 1992. In this study, the researchers compared behavior therapy with fluoxetine treatment. Both treatment modalities demonstrated similar changes in the brain-especially in the caudate nucleus.

Drawn together, these system level studies suggest that cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), dialectic behavior therapy (DBT), psychodynamic psychotherapy, and interpersonal psychotherapy alter brain function in patients suffering from major depressive disorder (MDD), obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, specific phobias, posttraumatic stress disorder, and borderline personality disorder (BPD). ³⁻¹⁶

The majority of these studies have reported similar brain changes after psychotherapy and medication. However, some recent studies have also shown clear differences among these treatment modalities. In the study by Goldapple and colleagues, ⁵ treatment response for CBT in patients with MDD was associated with increases in metabolism in the hippocampus and dorsal cingulate and decreases in the dorsal, ventral, and medial frontal cortex. This pattern was clearly distinct from the pattern caused by paroxetine, which included increases in metabolism in the prefrontal areas and decreases in the hippocampus and subgenual cingulate. In the recent study by Karlsson and colleagues, ¹⁷ clear differences emerged between short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy and fluoxetine among patients with MDD.
From brain changes to mechanisms of psychotherapy
In addition to just reporting the findings on brain changes as a result of psychotherapy, some of these studies have made it possible to construct models that explain the mechanisms behind the changes that result from the different psychotherapies. These models can then be compared with the psychological theories of these psychotherapies.

Many psychotherapies attempt to enhance patients' problem-solving capacities, self-representation, and regulation of affective states. The brain areas that play a role in these functions include the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, ventral anterior cingulate cortex, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, ventral and dorsal subregions of the medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, precuneus, insular cortex, amygdala, and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. (For a review, see Frewen et al. ¹⁸)

For example, the mechanism behind the effectiveness of cognitive therapy for patients with MDD could be through an increase in prefrontal function, which is involved in cognitive control, while antidepressant medications operate more directly on the amygdala, which is involved in the generation of negative emotion. ¹⁹

Because one of the major hypotheses regarding the effect of CBT on brain functioning concerns a more effective ("top-down") regulation of hyperexcitable limbic structures by prefrontal control systems, it seems that psychodynamic psychotherapy may also function, at least in part, via these mechanisms. The findings from a study by Beutel and colleagues ¹⁰ are in line with this hypothesis and demonstrate both a frontal deactivation and an amygdala-hippocampal hyperactivation seen in symptomatic patients with panic disorder. When their panic symptoms and anxiety levels were reduced following treatment, the frontal deactivation and amygdala-hippocampus hyperactivation were normalized.

Affective hyperarousal is the hallmark of BPD and the main target for DBT. This would mean that DBT leads to a decrease in the activity in relation to emotional stimuli in the brain areas that serve these functions. This was indeed found in the study by Schnell and Herpertz, ¹⁵ whose findings suggest that after DBT, there is a decrease in hemodynamic response to negative stimuli in the right-sided anterior cingulate, the temporal and posterior cingulate cortices, and the left insula.
Molecular psychodynamics
All these studies, however, have investigated the brain changes on the whole brain systems level. To understand the more basic mechanisms related to psychotherapy, possible molecular and cellular changes should also be studied. So far, only 2 Finnish studies have measured molecular level changes after psychotherapy, and in this way directly tested the hypothesis put forth by Kandel ² that psychotherapy could lead to changes in gene expression through learning, by altering the strength of synaptic connections between nerve cells and inducing morphological changes in neurons. Interestingly, in both studies, the psychotherapy that was used was psychodynamic.

In the study by Lehto and colleagues, ²⁰ 19 depressive outpatients received psychodynamic psychotherapy for 12 months. Of the patients, 8 were classified as having atypical depression. Midbrain serotonin transporter and striatum dopamine transporter densities were recorded using SPECT brain imaging with the [123I]nor-Î²-CIT radioligand before and after psychotherapy. The researchers showed that midbrain serotonin transporter density significantly increased during psychotherapy in patients with atypical depression, but not among patients with standard depression. There were no changes in the levels of striatum dopamine transporter. Because of the subgroup finding, these results are difficult to interpret, and one of the shortcomings of this study is the lack of a control group.

In the other Finnish study, patients with MDD were randomized to receive either short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy or fluoxetine. Before being treated and after 4 months of treatment, they underwent a brain scan with PET using [carbonyl-11C]WAY-100635 (measures the density of serotonin type 1A [5-HT 1A] receptors) and [11C]raclopride (measures density of dopamine type 2/3 receptors). In the 2 published papers, the researchers reported that the clinical outcome in both treatment groups was similar in terms of standard symptom ratings (symptom remission was achieved in 59% of the patients and 77% of the patients met criteria for response). 17,21 However, an analysis of the change in the 5-HT 1A receptor density in the treatment groups revealed a significant increase in the psychotherapy group compared with the medication group, for which no change was detected (Figure). Fluoxetine increased [11C]raclopride binding in the lateral thalamus; no change was seen in the group that received psychotherapy.

Several previous studies have found changes in 5-HT 1A receptor binding in MDD that is not reversed by SSRI treatment. ²²⁻²⁷ This could mean that the recovery process in MDD after psychotherapy is different from recovery after medication. Currently, the clinical implications of these findings are unknown, but they may be related to the finding that suggests that the relapse rate for MDD is lower in patients treated with psychotherapy than in those treated with antidepressants. ²⁸
Conclusion
Although still preliminary, the studies using neuroimaging for measuring change caused by psychotherapy will in the long run lead to a more refined understanding of how different psychotherapies work. This may lead to a development in which specific modes of psychotherapy can be designed to target specific brain circuits. ¹ In addition, neurobiological research may help refine psychological theories about the change processes.

References:
References
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4. Martin SD, Martin E, Rai SS, et al. Brain blood flow changes in depressed patients treated with interpersonal psychotherapy or venlafaxine hydrochoride: preliminary findings. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2001;58:641-648.
5. Goldapple K, Segal Z, Garson C, et al. Modulation of cortical-limbic pathways in major depression: treatment-specific effects of cognitive behavior therapy. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2004;61:34-41.
6. Baxter LR Jr, Schwartz JM, Bergman KS, et al. Caudate glucose metabolic rate changes with both drug and behavior therapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1992;49:681-689.
7. Nakatani E, Nakgawa A, Ohara Y, et al. Effects of behavior therapy on regional cerebral blood flow in obsessive-compulsive disorder. Psychiatry Res. 2003;124:113-120.
8. Schwartz JM, Stoessel PW, Baxter LR, et al. Systematic changes in cerebral glucose metabolic rate after successful behavior modification treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1996;53:109-113.
9. PraÅ¡ko J, HorÃ¡cek J, ZÃ¡lesky R, et al. The change of regional brain metabolism (18FDG PET) in panic disorder during the treatment with cognitive behavioral therapy or antidepressants. Neuro Endocrinol Lett. 2004;25:340-348.
10. Beutel ME, Stark R, Pan H, et al. Changes of brain activation pre- post short-term psychodynamic inpatient psychotherapy: an fMRI study of panic disorder patients. Psychiatry Res. 2010;184:96-104.
11. Furmark T, Tillfors M, Marteinsdottir I, et al. Common changes in cerebral blood flow in patients with social phobia treated with citalopram or cognitive-behavioral therapy. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2002;59:425-433.
12. Paquette V, LÃ©vesque J, Mensour B, et al. "Change the mind and you change the brain": effects of cognitive-behavioral therapy on the neural correlates of spider phobia. Neuroimage. 2003;18:401-409.
13. Straube T, Glauer M, Dilger S, et al. Effects of cognitive-behavioral therapy on brain activation in specific phobia. Neuroimage. 2006;29:125-135.
14. Felmingham K, Kemp A, Williams L, et al. Changes in anterior cingulate and amygdala after cognitive behavior therapy of posttraumatic stress. Psychol Sci. 2007;18:127-129.
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19. DeRubeis RJ, Siegle GJ, Hollon SD. Cognitive therapy versus medication for depression: treatment outcomes and neural mechanisms. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2008;9:788-796.
20. Lehto SM, Tolmunen T, Joensuu M, et al. Changes in midbrain serotonin transporter availability in atypically depressed subjects after one year of psychotherapy. Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry. 2008;32:229-237.
21. Hirvonen J, Hietala J, Kajander J, et al. Effects of antidepressant drug treatment and psychotherapy on striatal and thalamic dopamine D2/3 receptors in major depressive disorder studied with [11C]raclopride PET. J Psychopharmacol. 2010 Sep 9; [Epub ahead of print].
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23. Sargent PA, Kjaer KH, Bench CJ, et al. Brain serotonin 1A receptor binding measured by positron emission tomography with [11C]WAY-100635: effects of depression and antidepressant treatment. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2000;57:174-180.
24. Bhagwagar Z, Wylezinska M, Taylor M, et al. Increased brain GABA concentrations following acute administration of a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. Am J Psychiatry. 2004;161:368-370.
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28. Hollon SD, Jarrett RB, Nierenberg AA, et al. Psychotherapy and medication in the treatment of adult and geriatric depression: which monotherapy or combined treatment? J Clin Psychiatry. 2005;66:455-468.
29. Nakao T, Nakagawa A, Yoshiura T, et al. Brain activation of patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder during neuropsychological and symptom provocation tasks before and after symptom improvement: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Biol Psychiatry. 2005;57:901-910.
30. Sakai Y, Kumano H, Nishikawa M, et al. Changes in cerebral glucose utilization in patients with panic disorder treated with cognitive-behavioral therapy. Neuroimage. 2006;33:218-226.
31. Apostolova I, Block S, Buchert R, et al. Effects of behavioral therapy or pharmacotherapy on brain glucose metabolism in subjects with obsessive-compulsive disorders as assessed by brain FDG-PET. Psychiatry Res. 2010;184:105-116.

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Plastic changes in the brain have been difficult to study in humans, but there has been more success in animal studies. Changes in the brain in relation to experience have been detected at the cellular and molecular levels in animals using different experimental approaches.

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When I was about 6, my mind did something wondrous, although it felt perfectly natural at the time. When I encountered the name of any day of the week, I automatically associated it with a color or a pattern, always the same one, as if the word embodied the shade. Sunday was dark maroon, Wednesday a sunshiny golden yellow, and Friday a deep green. Saturday was interestingly different. That day evoked in my mind's eye a pattern of shifting and overlapping circular forms in shades of silver and gray, like bubbles in a glass of sparkling water.

Without knowing it, I was living the unusual mental state called synesthesia, aptly described by synesthesia researcher Julia Simner as a "condition in which ordinary activities trigger extraordinary experiences." More exactly, it is a neurological event where excitation of one of the five senses arouses a simultaneous reaction in another sense or senses (the Greek roots for "synesthesia," also spelled "synaesthesia," translate as "joined perception"). Some 4 percent of the population experiences this kind of cross-sensory linking, and studies have shown it's more prevalent in creative people. Artists who've reported extraordinary experiences of synesthesia range from 19th-century composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov to contemporary artist David Hockney to pop music star Lady Gaga.

FashionStock.com / Shutterstock

For me, the words "Sunday," "Monday," and so on, generated internal visions of color and pattern. Most synesthetic reactions also involve color in response to lexical stimuli-words written or spoken ("word-color" synesthesia), and letters, numbers, and symbols ("grapheme-color" synesthesia)-or to music and sound ("colored-hearing" synesthesia). Researchers have also observed dozens of other types of stimulus-reaction combinations: taste evoking a visual image, such as the flavor of chicken producing a 3-D shape; physical touch inducing the sensation of smell; and somehow the most extraordinary pairing, words generating the sensation of taste, such as "jail" creating the flavor of bacon.

At one time, strange pairings like these were little understood and even feared as signs of pathology. Now we know more, but many questions remain and synesthesia still carries an exotic aura. At the same time, it is a new tool to explore the human brain and mind, creativity, and consciousness.

Reports of sensory cross-connections go far back. In 1690, the English philosopher John Locke wrote of a blind man who associated the sound of a trumpet with the color scarlet, although it is unclear if this was synesthesia or a metaphor, a recurring issue in synesthesia research. In 1812, however, a German physician wrote a definitive description of seeing colored letters. Other physicians reported similar experiences in patients and the reports drew attention from scientists, clinicians, and artists. French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Baudelaire extolled the romantic idea that the senses should intermingle.

But 19th-century scientific and clinical understanding was limited, and synesthetes were often reluctant to come out of the closet for fear of appearing "odd" or worse. Some synesthetes were diagnosed with conditions such as schizophrenia when their cross-sensory effects were taken as delusions or hallucinations. Or clinicians denied that synesthesia existed, interpreting patient's statements like this "music looks red" as over-enthusiastic metaphor.

"When I see equations, I see the letters in colors," Richard Feynman said.

Fortunately the scientific study of synesthesia grew from the late 19th century into the 20th, mainly using interviews and group surveys. In 1895, psychologist Mary Whiton Calkins at Wellesley College analyzed her students' self-reported responses about synesthetic manifestations and speculated about their causes. But like every other scientist at the time, she had no way to probe the phenomenon at a deep neural level. Nevertheless, research continued and led to several international conferences on the subject in the 1930s.

But by then, research had diminished. One problem was the difficulty of tracking the many forms of synesthesia. Another is the same reason that human consciousness is hard to study-the synesthetic experience is internal and subjective. It's problematic to analyze a neural event when the only evidence is the subject's personal account. The entire field of psychology recognized this in that same era when it turned away from studying internal experiences.

In the 1980s, however, new approaches made synesthesia amenable to more rigorous and objective study and research has blossomed, with about 1,000 new publications since 2000. One big step has been the acceptance of a consensus definition of synesthesia. Its key features are that a subject involuntarily experiences vivid responses to stimuli that combine two or more different sensory modalities, and that the responses are constant over time; for instance, a given word always induces the same color in a particular subject (the colors themselves are unique to each person). The psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen and colleagues introduced this last benchmark in 1987 as an objectively measurable standard of genuineness. True synesthetes give the same responses to the same stimuli when tested and retested over long time intervals. Childhood synesthesia generally continues into adulthood, though not always. I lost my automatic color associations by the time I was 12. Today I can only remember the colors. (You can check yourself online for evidence of synesthesia.)

Besides these tests, new neuroimaging techniques have established synesthesia as a real neurological process. One widely used method is functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the brain. Unlike regular MRI, which shows the anatomy of the brain (or other internal organs), fMRI identifies which parts of the brain are active, nearly in real time. Since 2002, some fMRI investigations of grapheme-color synesthesia-the most widely studied kind-have shown that graphemes stimulate the V4 region of the brain. This area deals specifically with color within the visual cortex, the part of the brain that processes what the eyes see (the auditory cortex and other specialized areas handle the remaining senses). This is consistent with a model where the regions of the brain that analyze graphemes and that deal with color are somehow hyper-connected to create a synesthetic event. But not all fMRI data show the same result, nor is it clear if it is the visual perception of a grapheme or its conceptual meaning that is the trigger. ¹

Remarkably, even with advanced methods, other basic questions have lingered since the 19th century. How prevalent is synesthesia in the general populace? Different studies had given values from over 20 percent to less than 1 percent, a disparity partly due to the use of self-reported data. To remedy this, in 2006 Simner, then at the University of Edinburgh, and her colleagues carried out a controlled approach. They interviewed nearly 1,700 subjects and tested them for consistency over time. The certified synesthetes constituted 4.4 percent of the group, 1 for every 23 people-rare, but not vanishingly so. The data also showed that the most common subvariant is the one I experienced: colored days of the week.

Surveys and tests illuminate possible connections between synesthesia and artistic or creative ability. Catherine Mulvenna at University College London, who has written about this elusive connection, asks, Is synesthesia "a driving force or a mere idiosyncratic quirk" in artists? As Mulvenna points out, one connection of synesthesia with creativity is personal testimony from creative people. This often comes across as compelling evidence of true synesthesia. Vladimir Nabokov wrote in his autobiography Speak, Memory of his "colored hearing," in which the letters x and k are respectively a steely blue and a huckleberry blue. Richard Feynman has related, "When I see equations, I see the letters in colors ... light-tan j's, slightly violet-bluish n's, and dark brown x's flying around." Hockney sees colors when he hears music, which he uses when he does stage design for ballets and operas.

Many people with musical talent give detailed accounts of how music makes colors for them. Besides Rimsky-Korsakov, Jean Sibelius feared mockery for revealing his synesthesia, as did violinist Itzhak Perlman. In the worlds of jazz and popular music, Duke Ellington sensed both colors and textures from music, seeing dark blue burlap or light blue satin for specific notes played by certain musicians; the late jazz pianist Marian McPartland saw the key of D as daffodil yellow and B major as maroon; and Lady Gaga said in an interview, "I do hear music all at once and in lots of colors. It's like a painting."

Synesthetes were diagnosed as schizophrenics and suffering from delusions.

Research supports these accounts. Self-reported synesthetes appear at a relatively high rate among artistic types, and one study using objective testing found 7 percent synesthetes among 99 art students compared to 2 percent in a control group. There is also evidence of associations between synesthesia and elements of creativity, but one stumbling block is the lack of a satisfactory definition of creativity. As Mulvenna writes, "Creativity is a complex construct to define, almost to the point of infamy within fields of systematic investigation."

Nevertheless, researchers have uncovered suggestive correlations between synesthesia and creativity, at least as defined by psychological testing. In 2016, Charlotte Chun and Jean-Michel Hupe at the University of Toulouse, compared a selected group of 29 artistic synesthetes to 36 controls. Testing for aspects of creativity and related abilities such as mental imagery showed higher scores for the synesthetes, but with smaller differences than in earlier studies. These outcomes and other research results point to qualities that synesthetes consistently display, which may explain their creative tendencies: cognitive traits such as a disposition to think in images and sensitivity to color; and the psychological personality trait called "openness to experience," exemplified by intellectual curiosity and an active imagination.

Examining the synesthesia-creativity link is an important long-term effort, but there is a deeper question for synesthesia itself: What are its roots? In 2018, neuroscientists Simon Fisher and Amanda Tilot at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and colleagues published genetic data for synesthetes from three unrelated families where the condition is prevalent. ² Earlier work had not found individual genes that are responsible for synesthesia, but the new researchers cast a wide net. They obtained DNA from four to five synesthetes and at least one nonsynesthete from each family, spread over generations. All the synesthetes displayed the colored-hearing variant called "sound-color."

Using gene sequencing, the researchers identified 37 genes that indicate a tendency toward synesthesia. No single gene was seen in all three families, confirming that the inheritance of synesthesia is not tied to just one gene or group of them. But 6 of the 37 genes were linked to the development of axons, the long thin part of a neuron that communicates with other brain neurons through electrical impulses. Equally intriguing, the six genes are also linked to the early childhood development of the visual and auditory cortices, and the parietal cortex, the "association area" of the brain that integrates information across sensory modes for effective overall functioning.

Synesthesia researchers have entered the final frontier of brain studies: consciousness.

Since then, Fisher and Tilot have extended their new genetic understanding to study links between synesthesia and other neural conditions. ³ The genetic results and these overlaps are important because, as Fisher told me in an email, they "give us insights into shared neurobiological mechanisms ... increasing our understanding of how synesthesia develops." The genetic links to the development of the sensory cortices of the brain, along with fMRI brain scanning results, seem to support a theory based on hyper-connectivity among brain regions as a basis for synesthesia. More complete genetic data may also ultimately show why the synesthesia genes have survived the evolutionary process, perhaps because they offer adaptive advantages such as seeding creativity.

Synesthesia researchers have now entered the final frontier of brain studies: consciousness. They believe a new understanding of synesthesia can help solve the hard problem of how subjective experience can arise from the physical brain. Myrto Mylopoulos, a philosopher of mind at Carleton University in Canada, and Tony Ro, a neuroscientist at the City University of New York, have written that synesthesia research can broadly test theories of consciousness because the varied forms of synesthesia involve all the senses and cognitive elements. ⁴ The authors with other researchers believe that the empirical approach to finding or confirming a theory of consciousness is to examine its neural correlates, the objectively testable brain functions that must accompany subjective experiences.

Pursuing this idea, Mylopoulos and Ro considered how synesthesia can act as a test bed to choose among theories of consciousness, and examined prevalent candidates, none of which is as yet supported by much empirical evidence. "Higher order" theory assumes that conscious states are those that a person is aware of being in, which comes from another mental state operating at a higher level; but in "first-order" theory there is no need for a higher state because even a perceptual state such as viewing a flower is considered to be a conscious state. Significantly, these differences produce characteristic neural correlates operating in different parts of the brain for each theory. The authors conclude that the scope of synesthetic events spread over the brain and its functions can yield "initial clues as to the neural correlates of conscious perceptual experiences more generally," and help guide researchers toward a valid theory of consciousness.

As for me, I miss seeing the vivid colors of the days of the week that once enriched my internal vision. The colors now exist only in memory. But I would like to believe that synesthesia's link to creativity has enlarged my own mind, especially in my career-long devotion as a scientist and writer to interdisciplinary work. Even under strict scientific study, and centuries after its first observations, synesthesia retains its power to make ordinary life both more marvelous and complex.

Sidney Perkowitz is Candler Professor of Physics Emeritus at Emory University. His latest books are Physics: A Very Short Introduction and Real Scientists Don't Wear Ties. He is at work on a book about the use of science in the police and justice systems.
References
1. For a recent overview of synesthesia research, see Ward, J. & Simner, J. Synesthesia: the current state of the field, in Sathian, K. & Ramachandran, V.S. (Eds.) Multisensory Perception: From Laboratory to Clinic Academic Press, London, U.K. (2019).

2. Tilot, A.K., et al. Rare variants in axonogenesis genes connect three families with sound-color synesthesia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115, 3168-3173 (2018).

3. Tilot, A.K. et al. Investigating genetic links between grapheme-colour synaesthesia and neuropsychiatric traits. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 374, 20190026 (2019). See also https://www.mpi.nl/page/join-our-synaesthesia-genetics-research.

4. Mylopoulos, M. & Ro, T. Synesthesia and consciousness: exploring the connections, in Deroy, O. (Ed.) Sensory Blending: On Synaesthesia & Related Phenomena Oxford University Press, Oxford, U.K. (2017).
Lead image: agsandrew / Shutterstock

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max planck institute for psycholinguistics

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The Power of Crossed Brain Wires - Issue 86: Energy - Nautilus

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When I was about 6, my mind did something wondrous, although it felt perfectly natural at the time. When I encountered the name of any day of the week, I automatically associated it with a color or a pattern, always the same one, as if the word embodied the shade.