The Green Man, accompanied by Mrs Green Man, is a regular attendee at the Mind, Body and Spirit show that is held at the Melbourne Exhibition and Conference Centre each year. It is a colourful eclectic collection of stalls spanning the breadth of New Age and the spiritual. One of the things that is most intriguing, to The Green Man's warped sense of reality anyway, is that many of the stallholders seem to regard most of the other stall holders as quacks whereas their particular flavour of spiritualism or their particular New Age product is completely legitimate. This lack of a common vision translates to a strange communal disconnect.

One of the regulars at this event is the aura crowd. These are people who can see auras around people and are more than happy to represent them on a piece of paper using pastels, for a fee of course. Sadly, as Dr Jamie Ward of University College London points out in the October issue of Cognitive Neuropsychology

These colours do not reflect hidden energies being given off by other people, rather they are created entirely in the brain of the beholder.

These individuals, rather than being magically gifted with a special sight, have a brain condition known as emotion-colour synaesthesia. It is not that uncommon either, synaesthesia is a condition found in 1 in 2000 people. It is not always colour related more generally stimulation of one sense produces a response in one or more of the other senses. For example, people with synaesthesia may experience shapes with tastes or smells with sounds. It is thought to originate in the brain and some scientists believe it might be caused by a cross-wiring in the brain, for example between centres involved in emotional processing and smell perception. Synaesthesia is known to run in families.

Mind you, it is a fair bet that Dr Jamie isn't well received at the Mind, Body and Spirit show and probably doesn't have that much fun there either.

Read more here.