Every day we are in contact with others, with ourselves and with nature, but do we really connect in a profound way?Often this is not an easy task. However, we can say that, in a way, it is easier for people with synestesia of the touch of the mirror.
In this article, we’ll explore this unparalleled form of connection. To begin with, let’s understand what synesthesia is. Then we will delve into the characteristics of the synesthesia of the mirror touch and finally see how this phenomenon can be measured.
Have you ever imagined being able to differentiate flavors with words?People with synesthesia can do it.
According to the Michaelis dictionary, it is a “spontaneously established relationship between sensations of different character, in which a stimulus, in addition to causing the usual and normally localized sensation, produces a subjective feeling of different character and place”.
That is, synesthesia is a type of sensory alteration, in it a specific stimulus of one sense generates sensations typical of another sense, although the phenomenon may seem strange, this way of feeling is not pathological and does not correspond to any medical condition. .
There are different forms of synesthesia, let’s look at some of them
The field of synesthesia is increasingly sought after, so there are recent discoveries on the subject, such as the synesthesia to the touch of the mirror, discovered in 2005.
It’s also called mirror tactile synesthesia. It consists of experiencing tactile sensations after seeing that other people are affected, it sounds amazing, doesn’t it?Let’s look at the main features of this curious type of synesthesia:
There are many theories about the cause of this type of synesthesia. The three main ones are:
Mirror neurons, which seem to be more present in people with tactile mirror synesthesia, are also studied, so in non-kinesthetic people only imitative responses would be activated, while in people with this type of synesthesia the feeling is as if it were real.
On the other hand, synesthesia to the touch of the mirror is associated with empathy, it seems that people with this type of synestesia have greater activation in mirror systems, which leads them to develop a higher level of empathy.
Several researches have attempted to measure synesthesia using different methods to better understand it, for example by magnetic resonance imaging and CT scan.
Thanks to the researchers, we now have a deeper understanding of how touch mirror synesthesia works.
Blakemore, Bristow, Bird, Frith and Ward, in their article “Somatosensory Activations in Touch Observation and a Case of Vision-Touch Synesthesia,” published in the Journal of Brain Neurology, described their experiment.
It consisted of studying the neural system involved in the perception of magnetic resonance touch.
It was performed in 12 people without synesthesia and in “C”, a woman with synesthesia to the touch of the mirror. They analyzed neural activity to observe the touch of the human face or neck, with the aim of studying somatosensory typography in both cases.
As a result, did you get those activation models from? They were different from control people (non-kinesthetic) in three ways:
Through these measures, it could be shown that? It had a mirror system for touch that is above normal for conscious tactile perception.
Instead, in her doctoral thesis, Elvira Salazar decided to analyze whether the observation of painful and tactile stimuli generated a body asymmetry in the observer’s thermogram, that is, by applying a technique that can graphically record temperature, called thermography, began to observe asymmetry.
Because? In normal situations there must be symmetry, except in cases of pathology, he wanted to know if by not having symmetry and observing situations of pain and touch there could be an asymmetry in thermography.
Thus, he found an objective measure, thermal asymmetry, to study the physiological manifestations of mirror-touch synesthesia, as well as models of brain activity, subjective experience and behavioral markers.
The tactile sensation after observation is so profound in people with tactile mirror synestesia that they say the kinesthesia is more empathetic. An amazing way to connect with others, isn’t it?
We hope that several studies will continue to bring us closer to this synesthesia and others to learn more about this incredible phenomenon.