The mind is the way we define ourselves, what it means to be us. A survey of more than 2,000 people by psychologists at Harvard University reveals how we perceive the minds of others and what criteria we use.

The survey found that we use two dimensions by which we perceive the minds of others: agency and experience. Agency means the ability for self-control, morality and planning. Experience represents the capacity to feel sensations such as hunger, fear and pain.

Respondents to the survey were presented with 13 characters: 7 living human forms (7-week-old fetus, 5-month-old infant, 5-year-old girl, adult woman, adult man, man in a persistent vegetative state, and the respondent himself or herself), 3 non-human animals (frog, family dog, and wild chimpanzee), a dead woman, God, and a sociable robot.

The respondents were asked to rate each on the possession of characteristics of agency and experience. The results may give insight to how moral and philosphical questions are individually answered as well the formation of a society’s views on issues such as capital punishment, abortion and torture.

The fetus was regarded as having experience but no agency. The man in a persistent vegetative state scored low on agency but in the middle range on experience, showing that people may disagree on whether he would be capable of experiencing sensations.

“The perception of experience to these characters is important, because along with experience comes a suite of inalienable rights, the most important of which is the right to life,” co-author of the study, Kurt Gray says. “If you see a man in a persistent vegetative state as having feelings, it feels wrong to pull the plug on him, whereas if he is just a lump of firing neurons, we have less compunction at freeing up his hospital bed.”

Respondents viewed themselves as highest in agency and experience and viewed the normal man and woman to possess the same degree of these attributes.

How we view the minds of others shapes how we relate and how we believe society should relate to and treat them. If we believe a person has agency - that is, can tell right from wrong and possesses self-control - then society may punish them for wrong-doing. It is when we believe that they may not possess full agency, say due to mental illness, that our response to their actions is altered.

The findings of the study are published in the journal Science.

The letter A is red, and the musical note middle C is blue, some numbers are a friendly yellow and others more sinister-appearing, the word “love” tastes like chocolate. For people with synesthesia, the world is experienced in ways where the senses cross and blend.

Synesthesia comes from the Greek syn- meaning union and aesthesis meaning sensation. The condition is thought to be a cross-wiring in the brain, that brings two senses into play to create a different perceptual experience. Another theory is cross-activation of brain regions. Normally when one region of the brain is active, neighboring regions are inhibited. A chemical imbalance in the brain, for instance a blocking of an inhibitory neurotransmitter, may allow activity in a region of the brain unrelated to the first, allowing for synesthesia to occur.

According to a study, synesthesia is seven times more common in creative people as in the general population. Synesthetes have a way with metaphor, a natural gift for linking seemingly unrelated concepts and ideas. They have an unusually good memory for things like phone numbers and polysyllabic terminology because numbers and letters are perceived in colors.

Recently, the CBS news show 60 Minutes interviewed Daniel Tammet, a savant who also experiences synesthesia. At Oxford University, Tammet recited the number Pi to 22,514 digits. According to Tammet, the numbers appear to him as a landscape of shapes, colors and textures.

The study of synesthesia first surfaced in 1880, but was dismissed and forgotten until recently as scientists begin to discover brain processes that may explain the phenomenon.

Hearing Colors, Tasting Shapes - Scientific American

Brain Man - 60 Minutes

Synesthesia - Wikipedia

When you woke up this morning and opened your eyes, the world appeared before you without your having to think about it, call it into being or work out the complex physiology of vision. You didn’t have to consciously interpret the wavelengths of light being reflected off your walls to see the colors and shapes in the wallpaper, your brain busily interprets the signals from your eyes to create the world around you. You take for granted that these perceptions are the real world.

But what happens when we consciously switch visual perception? Ambiguous illusions are pictures or objects that elicit a perceptual “switch” between alternative interpretations. Perhaps the most famous ambiguous illusion is Rubin’s Vase.

When something surrounds another thing, the object surrounded becomes the figure and that surrounding it becomes the ground. The brain shapes the incoming information in one recognizable pattern, but with an ambiguous illusion, there are two possible visual interpretations. Note how your visual perception of the inverted vase differs.

What is your intial interpretation of the image below? Do you see a face? If you study the image, does an alternative interpretation appear? Look again. Do you see an eskimo? Now consciously switch your visual perception by thinking about the alternate interpretations as you look at the image.

Often, the alternate interpretation of an image is only realized after prompting or a period of studying the image. Once realized, it is then difficult for the viewer to see anything but the second interpretation.

For humans, “seeing” the world is not just a function of eyesight, it is influenced by the way the brain interprets the data sent to it by the eyes. Take another look at that wallpaper pattern, you may see something you never noticed before.