People have studied many things relating to, and regarding Marcel Proust; what they may never have told you is... Proust is funny!! (just not "Lucky Jim" funny.) [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation on Oct 29, 2009 - 22 comments

Challenge Your Senses
posted by blue_beetle on Jul 31, 2009 - 24 comments

Seeing, Hearing and Smelling the World. From the main page, click on the various articles to access a larger left-side menu, with articles including Illusions Reveal The Brain's Assumptions, A Hot Spot in the Brain's Motion Pathway, The Value of Having Two Ears, The Memory of Smells and much more.
posted by amyms on Dec 5, 2007 - 2 comments

Hacking the Senses: The brain is far more plastic than we commonly realize. Presenting new 'senses' via the old inputs works extremely well, to the point that long-term volunteers are a little lost without their new abilities to feel magnetic north or absolute orientation. Tasting direction; feeling pictures. Fascinating stuff. In a loosely related article, genetically modified mice are able to see the full color range visible to humans, even though the last natural mouse able to see this way died out a hundred million years ago. Add the new sensors, and the brain reconfigures. [via]
posted by Malor on Apr 5, 2007 - 68 comments

An exotic West African berry, known as miracle fruit, has gained a cult following by radically changing the way things taste: it eliminates sourness, making lemons taste like lemonade and limes like candy. Despite a long history of cultivation, the FDA has not approved the fruit or miraculin, the protein that causes its odd effects. In Japan, where it has been intensely studied, the fruit is served at cafes to help dieters.
posted by blahblahblah on Feb 6, 2007 - 34 comments

27-year-old professional recorder player can not only see colours when hearing music but can taste musical notes (see chart for details). More on synaesthesia, which has appeared here, here and here. [courtesy of CBC]
posted by boost ventilator on Mar 3, 2005 - 36 comments

Surgical Eyes - source of info about complications and their treatment from Lasik and other vision correction surgeries.
posted by Gyan on Jan 31, 2005 - 35 comments

Dr Hugo's Museum of the Mind - Synaesthesia
posted by Gyan on Jan 20, 2005 - 22 comments

Polarization.com - polarized light in nature & technology. [via MoFi]
posted by Gyan on Dec 8, 2004 - 3 comments

What does blue smell like? A novel theory contends that humans smell the frequency of a molecule, rather than shape (full study, pdf). In fact, there is no evidence to support either theory, leading to the question, how do humans smell? Inspired by bonehead.
posted by grateful on Jul 12, 2004 - 31 comments

The maps of perception.
2nd link: java applet.
posted by Gyan on Apr 25, 2004 - 6 comments

Seeing with sound.
A researcher in the Netherlands has developed a system that converts pictures from a head-mounted camera into highly complex soundscapes, which are then piped to the user via headphones. After only a week of use, a woman who has been blind from birth can tell a CD from a floppy, and discern whether the lights are on or off. Not quite up to either a bat and/or Daredevil standards, but very cool nonetheless.
posted by Irontom on Oct 14, 2003 - 5 comments

Test your senses A 10 minute flash test.
posted by Mwongozi on Jul 10, 2003 - 14 comments

"Modern scientists have known about synesthesia since 1880, when Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, published a paper in Nature on the phenomenon. But most have brushed it aside as fakery, an artifact of drug use (LSD and mescaline can produce similar effects) or a mere curiosity. About four years ago, however, we and others began to uncover brain processes that could account for synesthesia. " This article from Scientific American seems to be turning heads around the Psychology Department at U of M [Michigan]. It's got me going too. I've seen real connections between color and sound before, stone sober. Could there be something to all this?
posted by phylum sinter on Apr 15, 2003 - 23 comments

A set of 24 colour blindness tests I picked up this link from the comments in another forum, somebody mentioned they were colour blind and provided a link to these tests. Interestingly the colour blind can also see stuff that normally sighted people can't. [more inside]
posted by substrate on Mar 6, 2003 - 40 comments

Cool eyeball science Quick summary of interesting research on the output of the eyeball. 3 really cool things: 1, we know much more about the output of the eyeball now than a few years ago; 2, they've got a neural network doing visual processing like the eye; 3, most of what you see your brain makes up!
posted by daver on Mar 28, 2001 - 8 comments

Smell-o-vision may not be that far off, if the Digiscents.com people have their way.
posted by cCranium on May 16, 2000 - 10 comments