Théodore Flournoy on synesthetic personification

In 1893, Théodore Flournoy published a landmark book on synesthesia — Des phénomènes de synopsie [Of Synoptic Phenomena]. The book presented a pioneering chapter on synesthetic personification, including numerous striking case examples, and it is frequently cited by twenty-first-century researchers as providing some of the earliest examples of the phenomenon. Flournoy employed a broad definition of personification — the representation of stimuli as concrete and specific individuals or inanimate objects. This definition encompassed a more extensive set of phenomena than the definition used by researchers today and was illustrated by cases that would fall outside of contemporary subtypes of synesthetic personification. Yet, Flournoy’s seminal work remains unavailable in English, and the extent of the phenomenon that he described has not been discussed in the contemporary literature. We provide an unabridged translation of Flournoy’s chapter “Des personnifications” [“Of Personifications”]

Understanding the Role of Social Factors in Farmworker Housing and Health

Differences in social advantage significantly influence health conditions and life expectancy within any population. Such factors reproduce historic class, race, and ethnic disparities in community success. Few populations in the United States face more social and economic disadvantage than farmworkers, and farmworker housing has significant potential to ameliorate or amplify the health impact of those disadvantages. Drawing on the limited direct research on farmworkers, and on additional research about poor, isolated, and immigrant societies, we propose four mechanisms through which housing can be expected to affect farmworker health: quality of social capital within farmworker communities, stress effects of poor housing situations, effects of housing on social support for healthy behaviors, and interactions among these factors, especially effects on children that can last for generations. Policy and planning definitions of adequate farmworker housing should take a more holistic view of housing needs to support specific social and community benefits in design decisions. The Author(s) 2015

On tasty colours and colourful tastes? Assessing, explaining, and utilizing crossmodal correspondences between colours and basic tastes

Can basic tastes, such as sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and possibly also umami, be conveyed by means of colour? If so, how should we understand the relationship between colours and tastes: Is it universal or relative, innate or acquired, unidirectional or bidirectional? Here, we review the growing body of scientific research showing that people systematically associate specific colours with particular tastes. We highlight how these widely shared bidirectional crossmodal correspondences generalize across cultures and stress their difference from synaesthesia (with which they are often confused). The various explanations that have been put forward to account for such crossmodal mappings are then critically evaluated. Finally, we go on to look at some of the innovative ways in which chefs, culinary artists, designers, and marketers are taking—or could potentially push further—the latest insights from research in this area as inspiration for their own creative endeavours

The development of a scientific understanding of synesthesia from early case studies (1849-1873)

The first case of synesthesia was reported in 1812 (Jewanski, Day, & Ward, 2009). However, it took almost seven decades before the idea of synesthesia entered the mainstream of science and, subsequently, art. There are no known new cases described between 1812 and 1848, but in the following three decades there are at least 11 reported cases of synesthesia and many reviews of these cases. This comes at an important period in the history of the neurosciences, and for sensory physiology in particular. However, the literature that describes synesthesia during this period is largely unknown to contemporary researchers and historians. The aim of this review is to discuss the reports of synesthesia during this period, providing translations of some key passages, and to place these reports within the contextual framework of nineteenth-century neuroscienc