The Man Who Tasted Words: A Neurologist Explores the Strange and Startling World of Our Senses

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In The Man Who Tasted Words, neurologist Guy Leschziner explores how the senses, and the neural circuits that underlie them, shape our view of the world. By introducing us to people with rare sensory capabilities such as Valeria, Leschziner highlights that there is no “normal” perception of reality because what we perceive as being “out there” in the world is entirely generated by activity in our brains. If we have all our senses intact, we see, taste, hear, touch, and smell every day and probably think little about the complex systems that make it all possible and the many things science still ignores about those processes. This book changes that and forces readers to question the "reality" they have created, and that makes it the kind of book that has a lasting impact." One of your areas of expertise is sleep. The neuroscientist David Eagleman argues that the brain is a Darwinian battlefield between neurons and that dreaming is a means of maintaining vision when we sleep. What do you think about that? Information about where the pain is coming from is relayed to the area of the brain involved in all aspects of touch – the sensory cortex. This strip of brain tissue is the location of the homunculus, the brain’s sensory map of the body. When represented in a diagram or model, it shows a grossly distorted figure with overblown lips, tongue, hands and feet, where the density of our sensation receptors is highest and the requirement to discriminate the precise location of any touch is most pronounced. Simultaneously, this information about pain is relayed to even more evolutionarily ancient areas of the brain – those responsible for our emotions and drives; regions of the brain that encode our primitive needs – beneficial ones such as hunger, thirst and sexual desire – and those that are aversive – such as fear, danger and, importantly, pain. And it is here, in the limbic system, the emotional nexus of the brain that resides in the central depths, that the affective component of pain is processed. PDF / EPUB File Name: The_Man_Who_Tasted_Words_-_Guy_Leschziner.pdf, The_Man_Who_Tasted_Words_-_Guy_Leschziner.epub

We know that pain has got many components to it. A major component is the sensory discretion that tells you where in the body that pain is. Another feature that everyone will be aware of is what is termed the affective component of pain. In addition to knowing that I’ve just hit my finger with a hammer, it’s that sort of overwhelming unpleasantness, that dread of pain. I think that that’s a very important evolutionary mechanism. Pain is a very strong driver to avoid damage to oneself. It’s much under appreciated that smell is a very important mode of communicationI would have said vision first, then hearing, then touch, then smell and then taste. By the end of writing the book, I’m not sure it changed significantly, but I certainly appreciated smell a lot more. It has far-reaching implications in terms of memory, in terms of emotion, in terms of lots of hidden aspects of our lives, for example, the attraction towards another individual. I think it’s much underappreciated that smell is a very important mode of communication. The ability to feel this emotional pain implies that the central networks controlling this aspect of pain sensation are present in Paul, unaffected by his condition. His problem is more fundamental, simply concerning the perception of physical pain itself. Injury to his body and the normal triggers of tissue damage from burning, cutting or inflammation are just not making their way to the brain itself. A truly astonishing book – from the story of the man who tasted words to that of Paul who could pull out his own teeth and break his legs yet feel no pain. These are beautifully and engagingly written stories of how our senses tell us about the reality of the world – or, sometimes, don’t.’ The issue of pain features prominently in your book. One of your subjects experiences no pain at all. Why do you think pain is quite so painful? For [James] Wannerton, words are a constant source of distraction because the consonants give them taste. “College” tastes of sausage. “Karen” tastes of yoghurt. “Yoghurt” tastes, foully, of hairspray. “Most” tastes of “crisp, cold toast with hardly any butter on it”.

Each case of sensory alteration reads like a detective story, with puzzling symptoms pieced together” Imagine that you felt no pain whatsoever. While yes, you could do things like jump off buildings and not feel it, think about all the compound fractures and other nightmares to the body that you'd endure, without knowing about it. In the new book The Man Who Tasted Words, Dr. Guy Leschziner explores the nervous system and talks about how our neurological structures work, and how sometimes they can cause us to believe fake things about the world around us. In vivid stories of patient maladies that affect our very human sensations of sight, sound, smell, touch and pain, Leschziner has deeply explored the sensory experiences that bombard every moment of our lives but of which we are barely aware. What a terrific melding of brain science with thoughtful ideas on our window to the outside world.' The information you receive from your senses makes up your world. But that world does not exist. What we perceive to be the absolute truth of the world around us is a complex reconstruction, a virtual reality created by the complex machinations of our minds in tandem with the wiring of our nervous systems. But what happens if that wiring goes awry? What happens if connections falter, or new and unexpected connections are made? Tiny shifts in the microbiology of our nervous systems can cause the world around us to shift and mutate, to become alien and unfamiliar.A fascinating exploration of how our senses can enrich our experience of the world around us – and how they can work against us In The Man Who Tasted Words, consultant neurologist Guy Leschziner takes us on a journey through the senses, exploring how each one shapes our experience of the world. And investigating what happens when they deviate from the norm. Along the way we meet a number of extraordinary individuals and step through the looking glass and into their worlds. Worlds where hot and cold are reversed, where a person with no sight sees fantastical visions, or where words have a taste and sounds create sensations. The title of your book refers to a man with synaesthesia, in which one sense triggers another. He can taste words, while someone else sees colours in music. What does this tell us about our sensory system? In The Man Who Tasted Words, Guy Leschziner leads readers through the senses and how, through them, our brain understands or misunderstands the world around us. The book title is inspired by James, another synaesthete, who associates words with flavours. In James’s world, a trip on the London Underground is an uncontrollable buffet of flavours. Holborn station tastes of burnt matches and Liverpool Street of liver and onions.