Synaesthesia May Explain Healers’ Claims of Seeing People’s ‘Aura’(s)
Researchers from the University of Granada’s Department of Experimental Psychology have just published research in the journal Consciousness and Cognition adding credence to the idea that synaesthesia might explain some instances of people ‘seeing auras’.
There’s a link to Science Daily here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120504110024.htm
In ‘light’ of this new research, it’s time to delve into the hidden recesses of
The Hidden Whisper and dig out endnote 62.
62. Synaesthesia and Auras.
Psychics often report that they can see auras around their clients - coloured zones that sometimes get represented as a form of psychic energy. Recent research (Ward, 2004) has suggested that seeing auras might be attributed, under some circumstances, to a form of synaesthesia - an uncommon neurological condition where individuals involuntarily experience sensations in non-related modalities. For example, in what’s known as lexical-gustatory synaesthesia, a person might hear a certain word (e.g. purple) which then evokes the sensation of a particular taste (e.g. the percipient then tastes vanilla). To all intents and purposes, the taste is as real as if they ate the food itself. It’s worth pointing out that with this form of synaesthesia, the words do not have to link semantically (although they can), i.e. people do not necessarily have a taste experience that is citrus or sweet when they hear the word orange.
With aura reading, it has been suggested that a visual experience is fired, in relation to the emotion the reader is feeling at the time. If the reader looks at an individual and feels warm and happy, they might see a pink colour around the head/body of the client. If they feel uncomfortable with the client, the colour may be brown or blue (colours are personal and do not apply uniformly). It should be highlighted that any one theory is rarely able to explain all cases of a particular phenomenon.
ps - for those who are interested, I have posted on Kirlian Photography before:
http://parapsychologist.tumblr.com/post/512647470/what-is-kirlian-photography
