Tony Blair Tastes Like Desiccated Coconut...

...and

'George Bush is like crusty potato'

James Wannerton, president of the UK Synaesthesia Association, explains how the condition which "mixes the senses" affects his life.

He is speaking at a conference in Edinburgh where scientists and others with the condition are discussing the phenomenon.

Wannerton experiences a rare form of synesthesia known as lexical-gustatory synesthesia, in which spoken and written words elicit specific taste sensations that remain constant (Ward & Simner, 2003).

He continues describing his experience in the BBC article:

For as long as I can remember, words, word sounds, musical instruments and certain ambient noises have produced involuntary bursts of taste on my tongue.

Texture and temperature also feature in this experience which is with me 24 hours a day. My dreams also contain tastes, and I am unable to turn it off.

Although predominant during my formative years, I never considered these invasive sensations to be abnormal. Tasting words seemed as natural as breathing.

As I got older and more involved in the wider world, I found my word/taste associations having an increasing effect in my everyday life, subtly dictating the nature and course of my friendships, personal relationships, my education, my career, where I live, what I wear, what I read, the make and colour of car that I drive. The list is endless.

. . .

Whenever I see a picture of Tony Blair I instantly get the taste of desiccated coconut.

Gordon Brown leaves me with a very strong taste of dirt and Marmite, so he shouldn't count on getting my vote.

George Bush gives me a taste similar to the crusty potato bit on top of a cottage pie.

Why does this occur? Lexical-gustatory synesthesia has not yet been studied from a neurophysiological perspective. A more common form of synesthesia is grapheme-color synesthesia, where numbers and letters are consistently associated with specific colors (Ward et al., 2005). What are the neural mechanisms of such percepts? A recent study (Rouw & Scholte, 2007) used diffusion tensor imaging, a magnetic resonance imaging method that provides images of white matter tracts, to provide suggestive evidence of increased connectivity in the inferior temporal lobe regions involved in processing color and letter/word stimuli.¹

Footnote

¹ Although the increase in anisotropy, indicative of greater connectivity, extended to multiple brain areas [explained by hand-waving].

References

Rouw R, Scholte HS. (2007). Increased structural connectivity in grapheme-color synesthesia. Nature Neuroscience, 10(6), 792-797. DOI: 10.1038/nn1906

Ward J, Simner J. (2003). Lexical-gustatory synaesthesia: linguistic and conceptual factors. Cognition 89:237-61.

Ward J, Simner J, Auyeung V. (2005). A comparison of lexical-gustatory and grapheme-colour synaesthesia. Cognitive Neuropsychology 22:28-41.

Blue Cats Synesthesia Resource Center

James gets a taste of Marmite
when he sees Gordon Brown

THE NEUROSCIENCE PARTY

The Neurocritic has decided to run for public office as a candidate of the Superhappy Evolution and Neuroscience Party.



Here is our manifesto! Yay!

We want every woman to live like a princess with robotic servants and we want everyone to live like wealthy billionaires, wealthy members of royalty, and wealthy slavemasters with robotic servants and robotic slaves that will do all of the work for them.

FACE IT, it would be fun to live like a wealthy person with robotic servants or slaves doing all the work for you!

We want to do this by demanding a 100% requirement to teach artificial intelligence robotics for grades K-12 and a requirement class in universities with the goal of teaching students to make robots that can replace people and serve people. Every student will learn to make robots that can serve us and do all of the work for us so we can live like wealthy princesses, wealthy billionaires, and wealthy slavemasters with robotic servants.

I would also add a free pizza (a real one) to all registrants at Neuroscience conferences.

According to the promotional materials,

(CUrrently the Superhappy Party is officially registered in California and Nevada and I plan on registering it in all fifty states!)

However, I could find evidence only of an attempt to register (and only in California):

Parties Attempting to Qualify
As of March 2008

ANARCHY AND POVERTY PARTY

NEUROSCIENCE PARTY

NEW WORLD PARTY

REFORM PARTY

So it remains to be seen if The Neurocritic will appear on the ballot in your state...

Animated brain gif:

Unusual Conference Advertising

ICAD 2008



FIGURE 1 (Mosconi et al., 2008). Representative cortical ¹⁸F-FDG PET patterns in NL, AD, DLB, and FTD. 3D-SSP maps and corresponding Z scores showing CMRglc reductions in clinical groups as compared with the NL database are displayed on a color-coded scale ranging from 0 (black) to 10 (red). From left to right: 3D-SSP maps are shown on the right and left lateral, superior and inferior, anterior and posterior, and right and left middle views of a standardized brain image.

Reference

Mosconi L, Tsui WH, Herholz K, Pupi A, Drzezga A, Lucignani G, Reiman EM, Holthoff V, Kalbe E, Sorbi S, Diehl-Schmid J, Perneczky R, Clerici F, Caselli R, Beuthien-Baumann B, Kurz A, Minoshima S, de Leon MJ. (2008). Multicenter Standardized 18F-FDG PET Diagnosis of Mild Cognitive Impairment, Alzheimer's Disease, and Other Dementias. J Nucl Med. 49:390-398.

This multicenter study examined (18)F-FDG PET measures in the differential diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD), frontotemporal dementia (FTD), and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) from normal aging and from each other and the relation of disease-specific patterns to mild cognitive impairment (MCI). METHODS: We examined the (18)F-FDG PET scans of 548 subjects, including 110 healthy elderly individuals ("normals" or NLs), 114 MCI, 199 AD, 98 FTD, and 27 DLB patients, collected at 7 participating centers. Individual PET scans were Z scored using automated voxel-based comparison with generation of disease-specific patterns of cortical and hippocampal (18)F-FDG uptake that were then applied to characterize MCI. RESULTS: Standardized disease-specific PET patterns were developed that correctly classified 95% AD, 92% DLB, 94% FTD, and 94% NL. MCI patients showed primarily posterior cingulate cortex and hippocampal hypometabolism (81%), whereas neocortical abnormalities varied according to neuropsychological profiles. An AD PET pattern was observed in 79% MCI with deficits in multiple cognitive domains and 31% amnesic MCI. (18)F-FDG PET heterogeneity in MCI with nonmemory deficits ranged from absent hypometabolism to FTD and DLB PET patterns. CONCLUSION: Standardized automated analysis of (18)F-FDG PET scans may provide an objective and sensitive support to the clinical diagnosis in early dementia.

The Application of “Shoe-Smell” to Control Epileptic Seizures

Just in time for Easter...

Jaseja H. (2008). Scientific basis behind traditional practice of application of "shoe-smell" in controlling epileptic seizures in the eastern countries. Clin Neurol Neurosurg. Mar 17; [Epub ahead of print].

Epilepsy has been known for thousands of years and has been subjected to various forms of conventional and non-conventional therapies including a non-pharmacological conservative treatment known as aromatherapy, ever since. One commonly practiced form of aromatherapy that persists as an immediate first-aid measure even today in some parts of developing countries in the East is the application of “shoe-smell” during an epileptic attack. The questionable remedial role has intrigued neuro-scientists at least in these parts of the world. This brief paper attempts to provide an insight to the basis of persistence of this practice and to explore a possible scientific logic behind its unscientifically reported remedial effectiveness. The neurophysiology of olfactory stimulation from “shoe-smell” reveals a sound and scientific reasoning for its remedial efficacy in epilepsy; olfactory stimuli in this study have been found to possess significantly effective anti-epileptic influence which could have formed the basis for the use of application of “shoe-smell” in earlier times and also for its persistence even today in those parts of developing regions.

NOTE: this is actually a serious article, and the author lays out some possible mechanisms of the effect.

Although today, this age-old practice of “shoe-smell” may sound ridiculous apart from being most unscientific, its persistence as a remedy does tempt researchers to provide an insight to the reasons and basis for this continuing practice...

. . .

In earlier times, at least in case of temporal seizures with secondary generalization, strong olfaction (in the form of an old shoe) is likely to have succeeded in halting the progress of the seizure and aborting its generalization. People may have learnt this remedial effect from the above fortuitous observation. In those days, shoes were commonly made from leather and the other contaminants like sweat, dust, mud, etc., may have contributed to the strong smell emanating from the shoes; further, the easy availability of the shoes as a first and handy aid coupled with difficult accessibility to medical aids (both the physician and the drugs) aided in the evolution and development of the application of “shoe-smell” as an important first-aid treatment for epileptic seizures.

Existence of an inherent relation between smell and TLE especially uncinate seizures has been known for a long time, uncus being phylogenetically a part of olfactory brain. Olfactory hallucinations and auras often accompany temporal lobe seizures (Chen et al., 2003; West & Doty, 1995). Olfactory areas are in close proximity as well as directly connected to regions where seizures develop in TLE and neuronal activity generated by olfaction can thus prevent the spread of synchronous activity responsible for the epileptic attack.

So the question on everyone's mind today is...

WWJS?

Will the "Real" Jesus Sandals Please Step Forward?

from A Little Leaven.