Synesthesia Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Synesthesia - Essay Example Then, in 1704, a parallel was noticed between a musical scale’s notes and the colors of a spectrum by Isaac Newton, and Leibniz recounted the case of another blind man who understood scarlet by a trumpet’s sound. In 1710, another case of a blind man who had experiences of colored visions by responding to sounds was reported by an English ophthalmologist, Thomas Woolhouse. Castel noticed the same relationship as Newton in 1735 and built, presumably, the first color organ in the world. George Sachs developed the first medical platform for scientific reports on synesthesia in 1812, where he described his own experience with the condition in his PhD dissertation, and it was also the topic’s most approved account (Ward, 2008). He gave a report about his colored vowels, essentially about his albinism, and a depiction of colored hearing even though the significance was only retrospectively apparent (Duffy, 2001). In 1871, Gustav Fechner, who gave rise to the field of ps ychophysics, reported the first empirical study of the photisms of colored letters. By that time, however, there was still negligible interest in the subject, until Charles Darwin’s cousin, Sir Francis Galton, reported on people suffering from the condition and the attention grew considerably in the 1880s, especially in the scientific community. Researchers from the US, Germany, France and England carried out vigorous investigations on the topic, and this led the term synesthesia to be introduced by the American Scientist Mary Calkins. These early studies corresponded with psychology’s dawn in the field of science. It is believed that the pioneering international academic conference was held in March 1927 to objectively discuss synesthesia, presided over by George Anschutz in Hamburg, Germany. The second conference, also in Hamburg, was conducted in October 1930. The third was in October 1933 and the fourth, and last, in October 1936 (Hochel & Milan, 2008).