DO YOU FEEL ME? CAN YOU FEEL ME?

DO YOU FEEL ME? CAN YOU FEEL ME? Thursday, November 10, 2011 BY Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman “Feeling” is an important sense. All senses are important, as far as that goes. But, a new idiomatic nuance has entered into our lexicon, courtesy of young African American rappers, and entertainers. They poignantly, and habitually, ask their throbbing, interactive audiences, “Do you feel me?” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1in5wAVOyIk Note: no longer is the inquiry merely “Do you hear me?” Or, “Can I get a witness?” It is now: “Do you feel me?” Otherwise put, they are asking “Are you communing with me? “Vibing” with me? “Down with me?” In short, “Are we in spiritual synchronization?” Sometimes, they also ask: “Can you feel me?” http://www.jango.com/music/Will+Smith?l=0 Either way you say it, “Can you feel me” or “Do you feel me”, the sense of hearing, has coalesced with and melded into another sense feeling. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_You_Feel_Me . At a concert, or on a video “sight,” a third sense, sometimes completes the triad, further enhancing the thrill! This phenomenon, when two senses blend together, is called “adventitious synesthesia” by scientists. “Adventitious” means “accidental” or anything that is not inherently part of something else, but is something external to it. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/adventitious “Synesthesia” is from the ancient Greek σύν (syn), "together," and αἴσθησις (aisthēsis), "sensation. It is a neurologically based condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.[1][2][3][4] People who report such experiences are known as synesthetes.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia “While cross-sensory metaphors (e.g., "loud shirt," "bitter wind" or "prickly laugh") are sometimes described as "synesthetic", true neurological synesthesia is involuntary. It is estimated that synesthesia could possibly be as prevalent as 1 in 23 persons across its range of variants.[17] Synesthesia runs strongly in families, but the precise mode of inheritance has yet to be ascertained. Synesthesia is also sometimes reported by individuals under the influence of psychedelic drugs, after a stroke, during a temporal lobe epilepsy seizure, or as a result of blindness or deafness. Synesthesia that arises from such non-genetic events is referred to as "adventitious synesthesia" to distinguish it from the more common congenital forms of synesthesia.” Blended sensory perceptions appears to be far more common than simply 1 in 23 persons, when music is involved. In addition to synesthesia, music can also evokes a mood or a memory. Scientists have attempted to understand “why” this occurs“ often with mixed or inconclusive results. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-does-music-make-us-fe http://musicog.ohio-state.edu/Huron/Talks/Emotion.2001/abstract.html One thing is certain, whatever its “why’s” may be, music definitely does impact the cognitive and motor systems of the brain, enabling prediction, as well as the limbic system of the brain, enabling emotion. http://www.worldhealth.net/news/music-evokes-emotion/ Dopamine is actually released in the brain yielding a sensation of pleasure, when listening to music, whence, undoubtedly, the youthful exclamation: “that music was dope!” “Ever had goosebumps or felt euphoric chills when listening to a piece of music? If so, your brain is reacting to the music in the same way as it would to some delicious food or a psychoactive drug such as cocaine, according to scientists. “The experience of pleasure is mediated in all these situations by the release of the brain's reward chemical, dopamine, according to results of experiments carried out by a team led by Valorie Salimpoor of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, which are published today in Nature Neuroscience. “Music seems to tap into the circuitry in the brain that has evolved to drive human motivation – any time we do something our brains want us to do again, dopamine is released into these circuits. "Now we're showing that this ancient reward system that's involved in biologically adaptive behaviours is being tapped into by a cognitive reward," said Salimpoor.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jan/09/why-we-love-music-research Hence, these young African American rappers, and entertainers, whom we older types may have too readily “dissed,”—another of their terms--may be actually driving favorable “biologically adaptive behaviors,” in spite of themselves in their music!” Such biologically adaptive behaviors are being rewarded and stimulated by dopamine, world-wide, among their peers, and among their peers’ parents, by little understood neurological mechanisms rooted in the brain; as well as by little understood cardiovascular mechanisms, I suspect, rooted in the human heart, and within their powerful, equally mysterious, synesthesia.. So, as opposed to opprobrium and condemnation, these young people, instead, warrant our love and our praise for moving humanity forward in their own wonderfully dyspeptic way! Can you feel me? Do you feel me? OK, then, Amen!