Feature: What is consciousness? Exhibition aims to provide some answers

Imagine if you could see a different color for each letter of the roman alphabet or each Chinese character that you read; would that be amazing or commonplace? Is it even possible?

A new exhibition examining the mysterious world of the human mind shows that the phenomenon of seeing letters as colors has happened, that it has a name -- synaesthesia -- and that it and many other phenomena examined in the show at the wellcome Collection in London are all part of the collective human experience.

The works of psychologists, artists, writers, neuroscientists and philosophers are drawn together in the States of Mind exhibition to explore the area between consciousness and unconsciousness.

Curator Emily Sargent said: "We examine the wonder and the fragility of everyday experience. Touching on experience at the so-called edges of consciousness and looking at ways in which art, philosophy, folklore and neuroscience have established frameworks of understanding for conscious experience."

The exhibition takes as its starting point key moments in the historical emergence of the field of neuroscience. The pervasive idea of 'dualism', the separation of mind and body first formally outlined by Rene Descartes in the 17th century, is illustrated by works such as 'The Soul hovering over the Body reluctantly parting with Life' by Luigi Schiavonetti.

Philosophers and scientists have long tried to define how these two worlds interact and explain how an objective brain can produce the subjective experience of consciousness. The papers of Francis Crick, who shared the Nobel prize in 1962 for his work on DNA, show that he worked on this "hard problem" until the day he died in 2004,

Crick's notes are displayed alongside neuron drawings by Santiago Ramon y Cajal, the founder of neuroscience.

Sargeant said: "As Francis Crick writes in his letter on display here -- 'it (consciousness) is an immensely surprising phenomenon, or it would be if we were not so accustomed to it'. That is the ultimate edge; the boundary between knowledge and experience."

Sargeant said that she had prioritized individual voices in the displays, as all humans are authorities on their own experience, "that personal universe of experience that we hold within our own skulls. So, we hear from a range of different perspectives."

Illustrative of this is synaesthesia, a condition where one sensation may trigger another. As an illustration, 20th century author Vladimir Nabokov experienced seeing letters as colors and this is illustrated by his "Alphabet in Color."

Sargeant said: "We can enjoy the rainbow that Vladimir Nabokov drew in his synaesthetic alphabet; we can hear accounts in Carla McKinnon's disturbing and thought provoking installation about paralysis; we can trace the memories of a woman attempting to map the memories she has both lost and relearned living with profound amnesia."

But despite evidence and theories the subject of consciousness is mysterious.

"There are still many unanswered questions regarding its nature; it feels then like a genuine frontier for research and understanding," said Sargeant.

States of Mind: Tracing the Edges of Consciousness runs until Oct. 16 at the Wellcome Collection in central London. Endit