While working on my new book, I’ve occasionally found information and perspectives that I’ve thought should be of interest to brain researchers. Discover magazine’s Fall 2009 special edition The Brain includes articles calling attention to music’s effects on the mind, “huge-headed hominids” that lived in Africa until just 10,000 years ago, numerical abilities of an autistic savant, and a woman whose brain scan photo shows that almost the entire left side is “missing.” What could researchers learn from some of the books I’ve read?
Among the annals of so-called psychic phenomena, the life of Peter Hurkos has been chronicled in several books including his autobiography Psychic: The Story of Peter Hurkos (1961). The Dutch-born Hurkos (1911-1988) began displaying his psychic abilities after his recuperation from a thirty-foot fall that caused a brain injury.
Another memoir is Beyond Coincidence: One Man’s Experiences with Psychic Phenomena (1976) by Alex Tanous with Harvey Ardman. What Tanous observed about his abilities is similar to what has been expressed by many other people who’ve gained recognition as a psychic or medium:
Psychic medium autobiographies provide accounts of their having difficulties interpreting clairvoyant (‘clear-seeing’) visions as images often may have a symbolic association. Mediums also report that at times clairaudient hearing is difficult because only parts of words or an initial may be understood.
In The Brain, Daniel Tammet is described as ‘one of the world’s best-known autistic savants.’ Excerpted from his new book Thinking With Numbers, Tammet’s article begins:
Michelle Mack is the subject of Norman Doidge’s article “Wonder Woman,” an excerpt from his book The Brain That Changes Itself (2007). In the article, Doidge commented that the right hemisphere of Michelle’s brain “had to develop without input from the left and learn to live and function on its own.” Doidge observed: “Because Michelle has no left hemisphere, she has trouble seeing things coming from her right and is blind in the right visual field . . . what she lacks in vision, she has made up for with supercharged hearing.”
Observing Michelle play solitaire on a computer, Doidge commented, “I realize that she visualizes the entire deck in her head. She knows the position and identity of each card she has seen, whether it is currently turned over or not.” Conversing with Michelle, Doidge noticed she could recall dates with uncommon accuracy and confidence. Michelle is described as having “a superior memory for concrete details but difficulty with abstract thought . . . She said her vivid memory goes back 18 years, to the mid-1980s.” Other areas difficult for Michelle are “getting the main point” and “understanding proverbs, metaphors, concepts.”
Aspects of both Tammet’s and Doidge’s magazine articles reminded me of Russian psychologist A.R. Luria’s case study The Mind of a Mnemonist (1968) translated by Lynn Solotaroff. The subject was Sherashevsky (‘S.’), “a man who ‘saw’ everything” as shown by the investigation of his “exceptional gift for memory” during a period of nearly thirty years. During his career, S. became a well-known performing professional mnemonist who had to remember thousands of word series.
Luria wrote: “In S.’s case every sound he heard immediately produced an experience of light and color and . . . a sense of taste and touch as well.” However, S. divulged that reading induced remembered images and he would lose the gist of what he was reading. S. was observed as also having a problem with synonyms, homonyms and metaphors.
One famous inventor commonly accepted as ‘genius’ is Nikola Tesla, who published autobiographical articles in a 1915 issue of Scientific American and 1919 issues of Electrical Experimenter magazines. He recalled that at the age of 23 or 24 he knew entire poetry books by heart and could read them from memory word by word. In reflecting upon “the discovery of the Tesla Coil and Transformer,” Tesla mentioned commencing work in his own laboratory and facilities in April 1887: “The motors I built there were exactly as I had imagined them. I made no attempt to improve the design, but merely reproduced the pictures as they appeared to my vision and the operation was always as I expected.”
It seems that thought processes expressed by the word ‘imagery’ are involved with exceptional human memory or visualization skills experienced in so many different ways. How such skills are utilized or perceived determines what words are used by experiencers or others to express them. Some of these abilities at times are referred to categorically as ‘psychic phenomena.’
There are circumstances of ‘psychic phenomena’ found in case studies of Multiple Personality Disorder or what is now termed Dissociative Identity Disorder: (1) The Dissociation of a Personality (1906) by Morton Prince, M.D., LL.D., (2) the case of the woman whose experiences inspired The Three Faces of Eve (1957) by Hervey M. Thigpen and Corbett H. Cleckley, and (3) Sybil (1973) by Flora Rheta Schreiber. Eve subject Chris Costner Sizemore later wrote a more elaborate autobiography I’m Eve (1977) with coauthor Elen Sain Pittillo. In the latter, Sizemore’s alternating personalities were chronicled to have exhibited differences in handwriting and brain wave patterns.
Other data that might be advantageous for brain researchers are the reports of heart transplant patients, especially Claire Sylvia’s autobiography A Change of Heart (1997). At the beginning of her memoir, Sylvia commented: “I began to wonder if my transplanted heart and lungs had somehow arrived with some of their own inclinations and memories. I had dreams and experienced changes that seemed to suggest that some aspects of my donor’s spirit and personality now existed within me.”
Among the annals of so-called psychic phenomena, the life of Peter Hurkos has been chronicled in several books including his autobiography Psychic: The Story of Peter Hurkos (1961). The Dutch-born Hurkos (1911-1988) began displaying his psychic abilities after his recuperation from a thirty-foot fall that caused a brain injury.
Another memoir is Beyond Coincidence: One Man’s Experiences with Psychic Phenomena (1976) by Alex Tanous with Harvey Ardman. What Tanous observed about his abilities is similar to what has been expressed by many other people who’ve gained recognition as a psychic or medium:
The psychic images and messages I receive come to me in a manner familiar to everyone, I think. They are sent via the stream of consciousness — the words and pictures that run through my mind quite naturally.
Everyone has this stream of consciousness to one degree or another, from what I understand. We’re all engaged in constant internal conversation with ourselves. We all have moments when we watch internal movies in our mind’s eye. From everything I’ve been able to discover, my stream of consciousness is no different from anyone else’s — superficially anyhow.
And yet it is different, quite obviously. At certain times, it tells me things about the past, present, and future I couldn’t otherwise know. It provides visual images of other places and other times, which I have evidently visited in some psychic way.
Psychic medium autobiographies provide accounts of their having difficulties interpreting clairvoyant (‘clear-seeing’) visions as images often may have a symbolic association. Mediums also report that at times clairaudient hearing is difficult because only parts of words or an initial may be understood.
In The Brain, Daniel Tammet is described as ‘one of the world’s best-known autistic savants.’ Excerpted from his new book Thinking With Numbers, Tammet’s article begins:
When I recited the mathematical constant pi (3.141 . . .) from memory to 22,154 decimal places in March 2004, it seemed like magic to many people. In fact, the achievement (a European record) was the result of weeks of disciplined study aided by the unusual way in which my mind perceives numbers: as complex, multidimensional, colored, and textured shapes.
Michelle Mack is the subject of Norman Doidge’s article “Wonder Woman,” an excerpt from his book The Brain That Changes Itself (2007). In the article, Doidge commented that the right hemisphere of Michelle’s brain “had to develop without input from the left and learn to live and function on its own.” Doidge observed: “Because Michelle has no left hemisphere, she has trouble seeing things coming from her right and is blind in the right visual field . . . what she lacks in vision, she has made up for with supercharged hearing.”
Observing Michelle play solitaire on a computer, Doidge commented, “I realize that she visualizes the entire deck in her head. She knows the position and identity of each card she has seen, whether it is currently turned over or not.” Conversing with Michelle, Doidge noticed she could recall dates with uncommon accuracy and confidence. Michelle is described as having “a superior memory for concrete details but difficulty with abstract thought . . . She said her vivid memory goes back 18 years, to the mid-1980s.” Other areas difficult for Michelle are “getting the main point” and “understanding proverbs, metaphors, concepts.”
Aspects of both Tammet’s and Doidge’s magazine articles reminded me of Russian psychologist A.R. Luria’s case study The Mind of a Mnemonist (1968) translated by Lynn Solotaroff. The subject was Sherashevsky (‘S.’), “a man who ‘saw’ everything” as shown by the investigation of his “exceptional gift for memory” during a period of nearly thirty years. During his career, S. became a well-known performing professional mnemonist who had to remember thousands of word series.
Luria wrote: “In S.’s case every sound he heard immediately produced an experience of light and color and . . . a sense of taste and touch as well.” However, S. divulged that reading induced remembered images and he would lose the gist of what he was reading. S. was observed as also having a problem with synonyms, homonyms and metaphors.
One famous inventor commonly accepted as ‘genius’ is Nikola Tesla, who published autobiographical articles in a 1915 issue of Scientific American and 1919 issues of Electrical Experimenter magazines. He recalled that at the age of 23 or 24 he knew entire poetry books by heart and could read them from memory word by word. In reflecting upon “the discovery of the Tesla Coil and Transformer,” Tesla mentioned commencing work in his own laboratory and facilities in April 1887: “The motors I built there were exactly as I had imagined them. I made no attempt to improve the design, but merely reproduced the pictures as they appeared to my vision and the operation was always as I expected.”
It seems that thought processes expressed by the word ‘imagery’ are involved with exceptional human memory or visualization skills experienced in so many different ways. How such skills are utilized or perceived determines what words are used by experiencers or others to express them. Some of these abilities at times are referred to categorically as ‘psychic phenomena.’
There are circumstances of ‘psychic phenomena’ found in case studies of Multiple Personality Disorder or what is now termed Dissociative Identity Disorder: (1) The Dissociation of a Personality (1906) by Morton Prince, M.D., LL.D., (2) the case of the woman whose experiences inspired The Three Faces of Eve (1957) by Hervey M. Thigpen and Corbett H. Cleckley, and (3) Sybil (1973) by Flora Rheta Schreiber. Eve subject Chris Costner Sizemore later wrote a more elaborate autobiography I’m Eve (1977) with coauthor Elen Sain Pittillo. In the latter, Sizemore’s alternating personalities were chronicled to have exhibited differences in handwriting and brain wave patterns.
Other data that might be advantageous for brain researchers are the reports of heart transplant patients, especially Claire Sylvia’s autobiography A Change of Heart (1997). At the beginning of her memoir, Sylvia commented: “I began to wonder if my transplanted heart and lungs had somehow arrived with some of their own inclinations and memories. I had dreams and experienced changes that seemed to suggest that some aspects of my donor’s spirit and personality now existed within me.”
Previous post “Channeled Perspectives of the Brain”: http://metaphysicalarticles.blogspot.com/2010/01/channeled-perspectives-of-brain.html
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