Richard Cytowic

Richard E. Cytowic is an American neurologist and author who rekindled interest in synesthesia in the 1980s and returned it to mainstream science. He was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for his ''New York Times Magazine'' cover story about James Brady, the Presidential Press Secretary shot in the brain during the assassination attempt on President Reagan. Cytowic’s writing ranges from textbooks and music reviews, to his ''Metro Weekly'' "Love Doctor" essays and brief medical biographies of Anton Chekhov, Maurice Ravel and Virginia Woolf. His work is the subject of two BBC Horizon documentaries, “Orange Sherbert Kisses” (1994) and “Derek Tastes of Earwax” (2014).

In ''Musicophilia'', Oliver Sacks writes:

In the 1980, Richard Cytowic made the first neurophysiological studies of synesthetic subjects... In 1989, he published a pioneering text, ''Synesthesia: A Union of the Senses'', and this was followed by a popular exploration of the subject in 1993, ''The Man Who Tasted Shapes''. Current techniques of functional brain imaging now give unequivocal evidence for the simultaneous activation or coactivation of two or more sensory areas of the cerebral cortex in synesthetes, just as Cytowic’s work predicted.

Of ''Wednesday is Indigo Blue'', co–authored by Cytowic and David Eagleman, Sacks said, “Their work has changed the way we think of the human brain, and [it] is a unique and indispensable guide for anyone interested in how we perceive the world.” The book won the 2011 Montaigne Medal.

Cytowic is a Professor of Neurology at George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences, a Mentor at the Point Foundation, and a member of the Advisory Board for Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. Provided by Wikipedia