Bouba and Kiki
How would you name the above figures? If you were given two different names, Bouba and Kiki to choose from, which figure would you guess is Bouba and the other Kiki?
While this may sound like something I do with my children for fun, this question has been asked numerous times to different people by Dr. Ramachandran, a neurologist and a leading researcher in brain science from UC San Diego. If you guessed that the left figure is Kiki and the right one Bouba, you are part of 98% of normal population with the same responses. Considering that 12% of “normal population” believes that the earth is flat when asked, achieving 98% consensus is truly amazing for any scientific inquiry. In addition, it doesn’t matter that you are American, Chinese or Korean. Vast majority despite their language differences reply the same way.
Called “Bouba-Kiki” effect this observation tells us something about the way humans think that is very special. Monkeys and great apes are not able to do this. Autistic children and humans with certain strokes do not get this either. What we intuitively understand and grasp as “jaggedness” and “roundedness” that allow us to associate “Kiki” and “Bouba” to the figures, animals and certain brain deficient humans do not see. Without this effect, we would not have abstract thinking, metaphors, contemplation of meaning, sophisticated language, and creativity. Come again? All this with Kiki and Bouba?
Bouba-Kiki effect describes what is known as synesthesia or blending of senses. We do not usually imagine different senses being combined. We don’t normally taste colors, see sounds, hear shapes, or touch emotions in myriad combinations. However, it turns out some people do and the Bouba-Kiki effect describes how we all experience this blending of senses. The word bouba has no meaning. It is a made-up word. However, when the word bouba is pronounced our lips and tongues are rounded out making us “feel” smooth and round. This abstracted “feel” of roundedness is then associated with the figure on the right, which looks smooth and round. Speaking, hearing and visual senses are processed differently in our brain but the commonality of roundedness is picked up by mental blending.
The Bouba-Kiki effect makes us smart and creative. It is speculated that Albert Einstein was a synesthete. Dr. Harvey from Princeton took detailed photographs of Einstein’s brain before preserving it. One striking feature noted was that Einstein’s brain had a huge Angular Gyrus. Angular Gyrus is where all of the senses come together, being in the middle of parietal, temporal and occipital lobes that process visual, auditory and spatial information. Angular Gyrus and its neighbor supramarginal gyrus are unique only to human brain and are not found in any other animals. One can only speculate that Einstein’s epochal formula, E=MC2 may have not been possible without a huge Angular Gyrus that allowed creative blending of space, time and numbers.
This Bouba-Kiki effect allows for unique human experience of creating meaning. The perceptual information captured by our various senses become melded and abstracted via Bouba-Kiki effect. Therefore, the sensory experience of the color, shape and feel of the trees, leaves and flowers turn into the meaningful experience of the “scenery,” invoking warmth, sense of wonder, and beauty. The Bouba-Kiki effect made possible by Angular Gyrus in our brain turns our dry objective perceptual information of this world into very meaningful, subjective and personal experience of meaning. Artists are adept at communicating this very meaningful experience via their art works.
The Bouba-Kiki effect is God’s gift to humans. I wonder whether or not the Angular Gyrus is where the very image of God resides. After all, this is where all the senses come together to be fused, melded and abstracted for meaning. This is what gives us a sense of “self” as we experience this world. Because we have a unique sense of meaning, we become interested in “others” and their sense of meaning. In fact, without human interaction and exchange of this meaning we can lose sense of meaning altogether.
Jesus’ very first sermon is quite familiar to all of us Christians. He did not speak of some new truths or new revelations of the Bible or the Torah. He did not introduce a new set of rules or doctrines required for a new body of believers. Instead, He softly spoke of being pure in heart, being poor in spirit, mourning, being meek, seeking righteousness, being merciful, and being a peace-maker. He spoke of the issues of the human heart, its meaning and how it ought to be experienced. He told us that we would succeed in this life and the life hereafter if we understood these feelings as we relate to one another.
I question whether or not I am pure I heart, able to mourn, seek what is right in everything I do and make peace with those that I have hurt and those who have hurt me. While I fall short, I also realize that I do want to share meanings with others and that without others, I lose sense of all meaning as well as my sense of self. I am thankful that Jesus did not expound on a new set of commands. I realize again that Jesus knew what was important for the human heart, that we must empathize with what others feel, that we share in earnest what we feel, and that our unique human experience of meaning extraction is really all about how to interact meaningfully with others. “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” John 13:34.
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Dr. Carl Shin is a physician at a private practice for chronic pain management in Sacramento, CA. He graduated from Andrews University in 1988 as a theology major. After earning a bachelors degree in biochemistry from UGA in 1991, he graduated from Loma Linda Medical School in 1995 and completed a Physical Med and Rehab residency in 1999. He also did his Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania in 2000.