填空题 Have you ever heard the color blue? Or tasted the musical note F-sharp?
For most people, in both cases the answer is "no". But for some people blue has a
particular sound or shape, and F-sharp has a slight sour taste. This unusual blending 1
of the senses is called "synesthesia", a rarely neurological phenomenon occurring in 2
roughly 1 in 100,000 People.
People with this condition do not merely associate sound with color
or taste with sound, or imagine hear a sound when they see a certain 3
color. Rather, when a person with synesthesia encounters a particular sensory
stimulus, and says seeing the color red, they will hear a sound even that there 4
is no outside source producing the sound. In a similar manner, a particular
sound may cause someone with synesthesia to see certain shape or certain 5
colors, even when there is no object in that person"s line of sight. The same
goes for taste and smell.
Scientists know very little about what causes synesthesia, while it appears
to be hereditary, the actual neurological processes that account with the 6
phenomenon remain a mystery. Although most scientists agree that the
hippocampus, an area of the brain responsible for memory, plays a role, but 7
exactly how the hippocampus might cause synesthesia is not clear.
Otherwise, scientific knowledge about synesthesia is limited to several
interesting observation. For example, synesthetic perceptions remain 8
consistent over time. In other words, if a person with synesthesia sees blue 9
and green flashes when he hears a C-sharp, he will always see those same 10
colors upon hearing that note.