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And this leads to even more associations within a rich semantic network.Kiki is described as nervous and clever,while bouba is perceived as lazy and slow.What all of this suggests is that our everyday experiences of colors, sounds and other stimuli do not live on separate sensory islands but are organized in a network of associations similar to our language network. This is what enables us to understand metaphors even though they make no logical sense,such as the comparison of snow to a white blanket,based on the shared sensations of softness and lightness.Ideasthesia may even be crucial to art, which relies on a synthesis of the conceptual and the emotional.

some might say even a minuscule risk of shark attack is worth avoiding,because all you’d miss out on is an ocean swim,while others wouldn’t even consider skipping a swim to avoid an objectively tiny risk of shark attack.For all these reasons, risk evaluation is tricky at baseline,and reporting on risk can be misleading,especially when it shares some numbers in absolute terms and others in relative terms.Understanding how these measures work will help you cut through some of the confusion and better evaluate risk.

In real life,everyone’s individual evaluation of risk will vary depending on their personal circumstances. If you know you have a family history of heart disease you might be more strongly motivated to take a medication that would lower your heart-attack risk,even knowing it provided only a small reduction in absolute risk.Sometimes, we have to decide between exposing ourselves to risks that aren’t directly comparable.If, for example, the heart attack drug carried a higher risk of a debilitating, but not life-threatening,side effect like migraines rather than cancer,our evaluation of whether that risk is worth taking might change.And sometimes there isn’t necessarily a correct choice

In great art, idea and aesthesia enhance each other,whether it's song lyrics combining perfectly with a melody,the thematic content of a painting heightened by its use of colors and brushstrokes,or the well constructed plot of a novel conveyed through perfectly crafted sentences.Most importantly, the network of associations formed by ideasethesia may not only be similar to our linguistic network but may, in fact, be an integral part of it.Rather than the traditional view,where our senses first capture a collection of colors and shapes,or some vibrations in the air,and our mind then classifies them as a tree or a siren, ideasthesia suggests that the two processes occur simultaneously.

Not necessarily.The problem is that choices that reduce some risks can put you in the path of others.Suppose the heart-attack drug caused cancer in one half of 1% of patients. In our group of 1,000 people,four heart attacks would be prevented by taking the drug,but there would be five new cases of cancer.The relative reduction in heart attack risk sounds substantial and the absolute risk of cancer sounds small, but they work out to about the same number of cases.

Imagine that out of a group of 1,000 people who didn’t take the new drug, 10 would have heart attacks.The absolute risk is 10 out of 1,000, or 1%.If a similar group of 1,000 people did take the drug,the number of heart attacks would be six. In other words, the drug could prevent four out of ten heart attacks—a relative risk reduction of 40%.Meanwhile, the absolute risk only dropped from 1% to 0.6%—but the 40% relative risk decrease sounds a lot more significant. Surely preventing even a handful of heart attacks, or any other negative outcome, is worthwhile— isn’t it?

For example, a review in 2009 found that mammography screenings reduced the number of breast cancer deaths from five women in one thousand to four.The absolute risk reduction was about .1%.But the relative risk reduction from 5 cases of cancer mortality to four is 20%.Based on reports of this higher number,people overestimated the impact of screening.To see why the difference between the two ways of expressing risk matters,let’s consider the hypothetical example of a drug that reduces heart attack risk by 40%.

Risk is the likelihood that an event will occur.It can be expressed as either a percentage—for example, that heart attacks occur in 11% of men between the ages of 60 and 79— or as a rate— that one in two million divers along Australia’s western coast will suffer a fatal shark bite each year.These numbers express the absolute risk of heart attacks and shark attacks in these groups.Changes in risk can be expressed in relative or absolute terms.

A new drug reduces the risk of heart attacks by 40%. Shark attacks are up by a factor of two.Drinking a liter of soda per day doubles your chance of developing cancer.These are all examples of relative risk,a common way risk is presented in news articles.Risk evaluation is a complicated tangle of statistical thinking and personal preference.One common stumbling block is the difference between relative risks like these and what are called absolute risks.

Our sensory perceptions are shaped by our conceptual understanding of the world.and the two are so connected that one cannot exist without the other.If this model suggested by ideasthesia is accurate,it may have major implications for some of the biggest scientific and philosophical issues surrounding the study of mind.Without a preexisting concept of self,Descartes would not have had an to attribute the thinking to.And without a preexisting network of interrelated and distinct concepts,our sensory experience of the world would be an undifferentiated mass rather than the discrete objects we actually apprehend.For science, the task is to find where this network lies,how it is formed, and how it interacts with external stimuli.For philosophy, the challenge is to rethink what this new model of consciousness means for our understanding of our selves and our relation to the world around us.

Many would agree that bright colors,italic letters and thin lines are high-pitched,while earth tones are low-pitched.And while many of these associations are acquired through cultural exposure,others have been demonstrated even in infants and apes,suggesting that at least some associations are inborn. When asked to choose between two possible names for these shapes,people from entirely different cultural and language backgrounds overwhelmingly agree that kiki is the spiky star, while bouba is the rounded blob,both because of the sounds themselves and the shapes our mouths make to produce them.

In another study, synesthetes created novel color associations for unfamiliar letters after learning what the letters were. So because it relies on a connection between ideas and senses, this mental phenomenon underlying synesthesia is known as ideasthesia.Synesthesia only occurs in some people, although it may be more common than previously thought. But ideasthesia itself is a fundamental part of our lives. Virtually all of us recognize the color red as warm and blue as cold.

But newer studies have shown that synesthesia is actually mediated through our understanding of the shapes, colors and sounds that our senses apprehend.In order for the cross-sensory experiences to occur,the higher level ideas and concepts that our minds associate with the sensory input must be activated.For example, this shape can be seen as either the letter or the number ;and synesthetes associate each with different colors or sounds based on how they interpret it despite the purely visual stimulus remaining identical.

The traditional model of our mental function has been that the senses provide separate data to our brain which are then translated into the appropriate mental phenomena:visual images into trees, auditory experiences into bird songs, and so on.But occasionally, we have come across people whose senses seem to mingle together,allowing them to hear colors, or taste sounds.Until recently, the common understanding was that this phenomenon,called synesthesia,was a direct connection between the parts of the brain responsible for sensory stimuli such as seeing the color yellow immediately upon hearing the tone of b flat.

Long before Descartes famously declared,I think, therefore I am, and long after that,scientists and philosophers alike have puzzled over what they call the mind-body problem. Is the mind some separate, non-material entity piloting a machine of flesh?Or if it's just a particularly elusive part of our physical body,how can it translate the input of our animal senses into the seemingly non-physical experiences that we call thoughts?But though the answers have been debated endlessly,new research suggests that part of the problem lies in how we pose the question in the first place, assuming a distinction between our sensory perception and our ideas that may not really be there.

So rather than being a cause of mental distress,nostalgia can be a restorative way of coping with it.For instance, when people experience negative emotional states,they tend to naturally use nostalgia to reduce distress and restore well-being.Today, it seems that nostalgia is everywhere,partially because advertisers have discovered how powerful it is as a marketing technique. It's tempting to think of this as a sign of us being stuck in the past,but that's not really how nostalgia works.Instead, nostalgia helps us remember that our lives can have meaning and value,helping us find the confidence and motivation to face the challenges of the future.

And, in fact, despite being a complex emotional state that can include feelings of loss and sadness,nostalgia doesn't generally put people in a negative mood.Instead, by allowing individuals to remember personally meaningful and rewarding experiences they shared with others,nostalgia can boost psychological well-being.Studies have shown that inducing nostalgia in people can help increase their feelings of self-esteem and social belonging, encourage psychological growth,and even make them act more charitably.

Perhaps the most famous example of this was captured by French author Marcel Proust.He described how tasting a madeleine cake he had not eaten since childhood triggered a cascade of warm and powerful sensory associations.So what caused such a major reversal in our view of nostalgia?Part of it has to do with science. Psychology shifted away from pure theory and towards more careful and systematic empirical observation.So professionals realized that many of the negative symptoms may have been simply correlated with nostalgia rather than caused by it.

And by the early 20th century,professionals no longer viewed it as a neurological disease,but as a mental condition similar to depression.Psychologists of the time speculated that it represented difficulties letting go of childhood,or even a longing to return to one's fetal state.But over the next few decades,the understanding of nostalgia changed in two important ways.Its meaning expanded from indicating homesickness to a general longing for the past. And rather than an awful disease,it began to be seen as a poignant and pleasant experience.

At first, nostalgia was considered a particularly Swiss affliction.Some doctors proposed that the constant sound of cowbells in the Alps caused trauma to the ear drums and brain.Commanders even forbade their soldiers from singing traditional Swiss songs for fear that they'd lead to desertion or suicide.But as migration increased worldwide,nostalgia was observed in various groups. It turned out that anyone separated from their native place for a long time was vulnerable to nostalgia.

In the late 17th century,a medical student named Johannes Hofer noticed a strange illness affecting Swiss mercenaries serving abroad.Its symptoms,including fatigue,insomnia,irregular heartbeat, indigestion,and fever were so strong,the soldiers often had to be discharged.As Hofer discovered, the cause was not some physical disturbance,but an intense yearning for their mountain homeland. He dubbed the condition nostalgia,from the Greek ; for homecoming and for pain or longing.