MetaFilter posts tagged with senses

"The one thing more difficult than following a regimen is not imposing it on others." - Marcel Proust.

infinite intimation — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:39:15 -0800

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.) Professor of French, Catherine LeGouis at Mount Holyoke also reads Proust, and sees the humour: Then last year, while on sabbatical in Moscow, having already decided to teach this course, I reread the whole Recherche again, this time using the annotated four-volume Pléiade edition; this worked out really well. I never left my apartment without one of these smaller volumes in my bag, reading on the subway, or standing in lines, or waiting for people. This time I made it through the whole thing in six months, and I got far more out of it, not only because of all the scholarly notes, but also because I discovered Proust's amazing sense of humor, which shows up in almost every sentence. For Proust there may be no need for the concept of zero... from the infinitesimal instant; he defines his sense of œcology & œcomomia along the scale of the infinite. This stretching, compressing, and ultimate return of times, people and senses long gone is not his copyright... just his trademark. Or is it? Time and sense: proust and the experience of literature and THE SCENT OF A NEW WORLD NOVEL: TRANSLATING THE OLFACTORY LANGUAGE OF FAULKNER AND GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ despite this and other critical attention paid to the role of memory in the author’s preoccupations with the influence of the past and its dead on the present, few to none have commented on how either writer attends to the connection between smell and memory, and, in particular, of how olfactory memories, impervious to time, might haunt the present, setting the stage for the appearance of ghosts and eidolons who inhabit vivid reinstatements of the past. A careful examination of olfactory language and situations in Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! and in García Márquez’s Leaf Storm, will establish how for both authors, smells, like disembodied souls themselves, call forth ghosts and eidolons. Both authors use Proustian moments of recollection to depict memory not as a controlled, conscious return to what one might review or reconsider, but as a chance visitation of the past, an olfactory haunting of the past through and in the body. Like Proust, Faulkner and García Márquez align history and memory with the body on a strictly personal (read: physical) level; consequently, memory is not limited to the bounds of nostalgia. (full text is free, at bottom of page, but is pdf.) When the beloved Gabo is mentioned alongside Proust however... then things heat up! United States President Clinton is an example of a great thinker who knows to listen when Mr. Marques shares his thoughts. Carlos Fuentes and I have good reason for considering that evening as a whole chapter in our memoirs. From the beginning, we were disarmed by the interest, respect and humor with which he listened to us, treating our words as if they were gold dust. -Gabriel Garcia Marques on President Clinton. (previously; Proust is a Neuroscientist, Mr. Marques and Enron

Senese Challenge From the BBC

blue_beetle — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 11:06:26 -0800

Challenge Your Senses

See It, Hear It, Smell It

amyms — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 21:27:21 -0800

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.

The Phantom Compass Syndrome

Malor — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 02:27:41 -0800

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]

Make lemons into lemonade

blahblahblah — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 18:14:00 -0800

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.

When coloured sounds taste sweet

boost ventilator — Thu, 03 Mar 2005 09:42:33 -0800

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]

Failures of vision corrective surgery.

Gyan — Mon, 31 Jan 2005 18:43:19 -0800

Surgical Eyes - source of info about complications and their treatment from Lasik and other vision correction surgeries.

Through the Looking Chords

Gyan — Thu, 20 Jan 2005 14:19:11 -0800

Dr Hugo's Museum of the Mind - Synaesthesia

Polarized light in nature & technology.

Gyan — Wed, 08 Dec 2004 00:25:34 -0800

Polarization.com - polarized light in nature & technology. [via MoFi]

A clue! A clue!

grateful — Mon, 12 Jul 2004 14:17:17 -0800

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.

Sensestage

Gyan — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 11:11:51 -0800

The maps of perception.
2nd link: java applet.

Seeing with Sound

Irontom — Tue, 14 Oct 2003 04:12:33 -0800

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.

Test your senses

Mwongozi — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 08:09:53 -0800

Test your senses A 10 minute flash test.

Smelling Colors, Hearing numbers

phylum sinter — Tue, 15 Apr 2003 21:13:38 -0800

"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?

Colour me blind

substrate — Thu, 06 Mar 2003 10:36:08 -0800

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]

daver — Wed, 28 Mar 2001 15:37:37 -0800

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!

cCranium — Tue, 16 May 2000 06:26:43 -0800

Smell-o-vision may not be that far off, if the Digiscents.com people have their way.