Heroes question.
Jan. 16th, 2010 11:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daibhidcOkay, I've just been watching Heroes, Volume Five Chapter Three: "Ink". There's a character who is deaf, but whose power is that she can see sounds. (But, for some reason, not all sounds; there's a burst of colour from a broken coffee mug, some beautiful swirly things from a cello, but nothing from traffic noise, or people speaking, or the applause following the cello bit[1].)
Am I right in thinking that calling this synthaesia (as her doctor does) is completely wrong?
As I understand it, synthaesia happens in the brain; it's not that the sounds are somehow being detected through the eyes, it's that once they've been detected through the ears, the brain mixes them up. If you're deaf, you can't detect sounds in the first place.
I don't have any problem with the character having a completely impossible ability because, well, it's Heroes, that's what it's about. But calling it by the name of a real condition which it bears a vague similarity to seems ... odd.
[1]Which we're definitely seeing from her viewpoint, because they don't make any sound either. And how exactly do her powers enable her to play a cello without lessons, anyway?
Am I right in thinking that calling this synthaesia (as her doctor does) is completely wrong?
As I understand it, synthaesia happens in the brain; it's not that the sounds are somehow being detected through the eyes, it's that once they've been detected through the ears, the brain mixes them up. If you're deaf, you can't detect sounds in the first place.
I don't have any problem with the character having a completely impossible ability because, well, it's Heroes, that's what it's about. But calling it by the name of a real condition which it bears a vague similarity to seems ... odd.
[1]Which we're definitely seeing from her viewpoint, because they don't make any sound either. And how exactly do her powers enable her to play a cello without lessons, anyway?
