2012 Pre-Conference Workshops  

Full Day Workshop

Toward a Science of Consciousness

Loews Ventana Canyon Resort

Monday, April 9, 2012

9:00a - 1:00p

2:00p - 6:00p

                          Cross Modal Consciousness: The World of Synesthetes

In this workshop synesthetes, synesthesia researchers and other facilitators will examine what is not just a mixing of senses but
perhaps an altered form of consciousness. Dr. Stuart Hameroff has said, "it could be that synesthetes are in more of what you might call
an altered state or dream state or quantum state." While materialists describe synesthesia in terms of crossed neurons or lack of chemical inhibition between them, it is far more an experience of consciousness than anatomy for those people living with the trait. Synesthetes have facility with metaphor, have eidetic memory, are found eight times more commonly in the arts, have out of body experiences and in the case of some of the sight-challenged, are able to echolocate. 

       Neil THEISE           Daniel KISH             Naama KOSTINER   

       Moderator                                                                                                                                                      

     Lidell  SIMPSON    Jason PADGETT     Alice SHULTZ    Christine SIMMONDS- MOORE

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Presenter Bios

Neil Theise, MD is a practicing physician and an internationally recognized pioneer in the field of adult stem cell plasticity as well as a long time Zen Buddhist practitioner and synesthete who is the Medical Director for the Pop Test companies and professor of pathology and medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City.

Daniel Kish, Human echolocation specialist who is also a plenary speaker at the conference, works with the blind, leading teen-agers hiking and mountain-biking through the wilderness and teaching them how to navigate new locations safely through the non-profit organization World Access for the Blind. Kish had his eyes removed at the age of 13 months due to retinal cancer. He has developed a click-emitting device and trains other blind people in the use of echolocation. Several of his students exhibit synesthesia. Daniel will discuss the ability for blind individuals to learn to activate elements of the visual cortex to process distal spatial information through human sonar, with emphasis on the developmental factors surrounding brain plasticity into cross modal sensory processing. 

Naama Kostiner, MSW is a psychotherapist, personal well-being advisor and an artist and synesthete whose life is a maze of merging cultures, as she has been raised and has lived in many different locations around the world including Europe, the Americas and Israel.

is a psychotherapist,  personal well-being advisor and artist.   In addition to organizational coaching

and consulting for businesses she gives workshops and talks. She presented at the last TSC in Stockholm (April 2011)

Spirituality has always played an important role in her life and is a continuing influence due to her training in Native American shamanism amongst other paths. She has a Master's degree in Clinical Social Work ( Haifa U ) and is a certified group counselor. Naama will speak on holistic healing and synesthesia.

Christine Simmonds-Moore earned her Ph.D in psychology (investigating schizotypy as an anomaly-prone personality) from University of Northampton in the UK. In 2010, she left her native UK (where she had been working as a psychology professor at Liverpool Hope University) for the USA. Christine worked as a Senior Research Fellow at the Rhine Research Center in Durham North Carolina and is currently with the Psychology Dept. at Universty of West Georgia. Her research interests include the study of personality types who are prone to subjective anomalous and paranormal experiences and beliefs (in particular, positive schizotypy and transliminality); transpersonal experiences; the overlaps between parapsychology and clinical psychology/mental health; cognitive and neurobiological correlates of paranormal experiences (e.g., attention); synesthesia and anomalous experiences and how sleep-related and other altered states of consciousness relate to subjective anomalous experiences. Christine has worked on a variety of Bial (and other) funded research projects. Christine will discuss her ongoing research, which is investigating the relationship between the synesthesias and anomalous experiences, including ESP.

Lidell Simpson is a synesthete, synesthesia researcher and theorist who despite being deaf likes to say he's never known a day of silence in his life and who composes audio tracks of his inner, synesthetic hearing.

Jason Padgett of Washington State is a mathematician and artist with acquired synesthesia and savant syndrome due to a brain injury suffered in a mugging nine years ago. Jason will speak about the origins of pi and how it became apparent to him through synesthetic imagery.

Alice Schultze is a former humor and feature writer (Dan's Papers of the Hamptons and the New York Times among others) who now creates poetry, often spiritual in nature. She is a synesthete and lays claim to the distinction of "likely being the world’s oldest person to figure this out," as she jokingly points out.

This workshop was organized by Maureen Seaberg

Maureen Seaberg is a NYC-based author and synesthete who is moderating a synesthesia workshop for the third time at TSC. She is the author of the synesthesia memoir, Tasting the Universe, which is the basis for an upcoming documentary. Her next book, The Man Who Sees Space and Time is about workshop participant Jason Padgett, a synesthete and savant. She has written for the New York Times, Huffington Post, the Daily Beast and appeared on MSNBC and PBS. She has also presented on synesthesia at Yale Divinity School, Tibet House, Vanderbilt University and New York University. Maureen will present on how newly "out" famous synesthetes such as Lady Gaga, Darrell Hammond, designer Iris van Herpen, the late songwriter Laura Nyro and Geoffrey Rush use synesthesia to inform their art.

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